Auction Name: 2025 December 15 Rare Books Signature® Auction

Lot Number: 45154

Shortcut to Lot: HA.com/6323*45154

[Caspar Plautius]. Honorius Philoponus. Nova Typis Transacta Navigatio. Novi Orbis Indiae Occidentalis. [Lintz], 1621.

4to. Engraved title page and 18 numbered plates, also with engraved head- and tail-pieces and historiated initials. 18th-century mottled calf, spine gilt, gilt red leather lettering-piece.

FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE with 3 preliminary leaves (Sabin calls for 4 preliminary pages, which make up the Dedication, as here). The second issue, with the same title and date, contains additional preliminary and supplementary leaves, and an extra plate depicting an owl (Sabin). Only the first numbered plate is signed by the engraver, Wolf. Kilian, in the plate; the remaining 17 plates are unsigned, though similar in style and theme to the first, and it is likely they were also executed by Kilian.

EXTREMELY RARE FIRST ISSUE. The second issue is far more common; only two copies of the first issue have appeared at auction since 1960.

"This is one of the impudentest books known. The author's real name was Caspar Plautus, a monk at Lintz in Austria. In the most fulsome style, under his assumed name of Philoponus, he inscribed the work to himself in a long and highly complimentary Dedication. He accuses the DeBrys, in their great collection of Voyages, of telling outrageous lies, forgetting apparently his own wackers" (Stevens).

Condition: Joints starting and some loss at spine heads; rear hinge starting; a few minor wormholes in spine; some edgewear. Title page trimmed and mounted on inserted sheet; a few minor wormholes confined to margins, not affecting text or plates; a few marginalia throughout; staining to A3v; text lightly browned; minor thumbsoiling; a few paper flaws with minor losses, all confined to margins and not affecting text; 18th-century ownership signature to fly-leaf.

References: Alden-Landis 621/100; JCB II, pp. 156-157 (noting 7 unnumbered preliminary leaves in the first edition, and 4 unnumbered preliminary leaves in the second edition); Palau VI (first edition), p. 107; Sabin 63367; Stevens, Biblioteca Historica, 1549.

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