"O ELOQUENT, JUST, AND MIGHTY DEATH!": 1621 EDITION OF RALEIGH'S HISTORY OF THE WORLD, WITH FINE DOUBLE-PAGE MAPS

RALEIGH, Walter. The History of the World. London: Printed (by William Jaggard) for Walter Burre, 1614 (colophon dated 1621). Thick folio (9 by 13-1/2 inches), period-style full calf gilt, red morocco spine label.

Third edition of Raleigh's monumental history of the world, his last work, written during his long imprisonment in the Tower of London. With handsome engraved title page, engraved portrait on the letterpress title page, eight double-page maps, as well as tables, woodcut head- and tailpieces and initial letters.

Raleigh intended to publish his history in three parts, but completed only the first volume, beginning with the Creation and ending at 130 B.C. He traces the rise and fall of the three great empires of Babylon, Assyria, and Macedon, and deals exhaustively with the most flourishing periods of Jewish, Greek, and Roman history. The first edition was published in 1614. "The success of Raleigh's History… can perhaps be explained by the very fact that it is not a work of history in the academic sense but a political tract of immediate applicability. Its author was listened to, not so much because he was a scholar… as because he embodied all the glories of the reign of Elizabeth I, which at the time of publication had already begun to be transfigured into a golden age…. the History provided an arsenal of political ammunition to the Englishmen who overthrew the absolutism of the Stewarts at home and laid the foundations of New England beyond the seas… Sir Walter Raleigh can be taken as the epitome of the Elizabethan idea of courtier and politician, sailor and explorer, writer and poet… He was among the first Englishmen to envisage clearly that the Americas should be the principal goal of English overseas expansion… The reversal of Elizabeth's policy by James I encompassed Raleigh's ruin: imprisoned in the Tower of London from 1603 to 1616 on a trumped-up charge, he finally fell a victim to James' pro-Spanish inclinations, and the last Elizabethan died by the executioner's axe" (PMM 117). The 36-page "Life of Walter Raleigh" found in this copy after the Contents and before the History—not called for in Armitage's collation—is inserted from a later edition of the work. Leaves V2 and V3 (pp. 223-26) bound out of order; text complete. Armitage 40. Brushfield 223(D). STC 20639. See Pforzheimer 820. Title inked along upper margin of title page; a few early owner markings on colophon page.

Old marginal wear and paper repairs to engraved frontispiece, facing explanatory leaf, and colophon; short closed tear to engraved portrait on title page, small tear to final leaf just touching colophon. Two-inch tear to lower corner of map at page 270 in the "Fifth Book." Text generally clean, engraved maps fresh and fine. An excellent copy, beautifully bound.