The Navigations, peregrinations and voyages, made into Turkie by Nicholas Nicolay Daulphinois, Lord of Arfueile, Chamberlaine and Geographer ordinarie to the King of Fraunce…

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, [4], 161, [5]pp., 60 full page woodcut illustrations, decorative border to title, title laid down, marginal repair to 1pp. not affecting text, text block trimmed not affecting text but occasionally clipping pagination, contemporary green morocco, boards blind tooled, rebacked, original spine laid down, a.e.g., bookplates to pastedown and front free endpaper, 4to, London, Thomas Dawson, 1585

The artist, geographer and spy Nicholas de Nicolay left his native France at the age of 25 and for sixteen years travelled through Germany, Denmark, Prussia, Sweden, England, Scotland and Spain. In 1551 he went to the court in Constantinople as part of the embassy from Henri II of France to the “Great Turk”, Suleiman the Magnificent. Henri’s predecessor had counted the Sultan as an ally and Henri wished to revive that accord. Nicolay’s work, a combination of a travelogue with a survey of the Ottoman Empire, was first published in French in 1567 and quickly translated into other European languages. The sixty drawings depicting Turkish costumes were widely influential. His depiction of the Ottomans is less pejorative than other similar accounts although still interwoven at times with salacious details of sex, drugs and cruelty. Originally engraved by Louis Danet, and copied here from the Antwerp edition, the illustrations circulated widely during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Provenance:

William Curtis

King Lawrence Parker

Blackmer 1197; USTC:510346