“COWS ARE THE MOST HIGHLY ESTEEM’D; FOR THEY TIP THEIR HORNS WITH GOLD, AND BESET THEM WITH PRECIOUS STONES”: OGILBY’S ASIA, 1673, LARGE FOLIO FIRST EDITION, SPLENDIDLY ILLUSTRATED WITH 34 COPPER-ENGRAVED MAPS AND PLATES OF PERSIA AND INDIA

(PERSIA) (INDIA) OGILBY, John. Asia, the First Part. Being an Accurate Description of Persia, and the Several Provinces thereof. The Vast Empire of the Great Mogol, and Other Parts of India: And their Several Kingdoms and Regions… London: Printed by the Author at his House in White-Friers, 1673. Folio (11 by 17 inches), period-style full mottled brown calf, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spine.

First edition, splendidly illustrated with engraved frontispiece, five double-page maps, 28 plates (12 double-page) and 28 engraved in-text illustrations. Complete in itself.

“Ogilby, one of the more colorful figures associated with cartography, started life as a dancing master and finished as the King’s Cosmographer and Geographic Printer. In the course of an eventful life he built a theatre in Dublin, became the Deputy Master of Revels in Ireland, translated various Greek and Latin works and built up a book publishing business; in the process he twice lost all he possessed, first in a shipwreck during the Civil Wars and then in the Great Fire. Even this disaster he turned to advantage by being appointed to the Commission of Survey following the fire. Finally he turned to printing again and in a few short years organized a survey of all the main post roads in the country and published the first practical road atlas, the Britannia, which was to have far-reaching effects on future map making” (Antique Maps). Ogilby conceived an ambitious project, a multi-volume description of the world, in 1669, which would include Asia as the third volume, following Africa and America. The volumes were done in collaboration with the Dutch publisher Jacob von Meurs. Ogilby’s Asia is in large part a translation of Olfert Dapper’s Asia, published in Dutch a year earlier, and it includes all of the magnificent Dutch engravings of Persia and South Asia that illustrated the earlier work. It includes illustrations of Hindu mythology, portraits of rulers, and wonderfully detailed views of cities. A prolific author, Ogilby devoted the last years of his life to producing works of geography and topography: he “may be considered as the English De Bry, as his works are similar in their objects, compilation, and mode of illustrations” (Cox II:69). “Although the title pages reads ‘First Part,’ this volume is complete in itself. The Second Part treats of China” (Cox I:275) and was in fact published two years earlier. This copy with the large folding hand-colored map of Asia not mentioned in the plate list and often absent. Wing O166. Cox I, 275.

Plates and text generally fine, a few leaves including pictorial title page with minor marginal repairs. A beautiful copy.