Voyage de Guinee, contenant Une Description nouvelle & tres-exacte de cette Cote ou l'on trouve & ou l'on trafique l'or, les dents d'Elephant, & les Esclaves:....

Autrecht: Ches Antoine Schouten, Marchand Libraire, 1705 A fair copy of the 1st edition of the French translation of this work by Willem Bosman. Classed as 'fair' because it contains 19 of the 27 plates issued. Bosman lived in Dutch West Africa from 1688 to 1701 and worked for the Dutch West India Company, becoming Chief Merchant, until his forced retirement at the age of 29. He returned to Europe and wrote up his experience of West Africa using a letter format. It was extremely popular, particularly because his was the first full and accessible account of the area. It has been used as a major source of information on the Dutch Slave Trade. This copy has been fairly recently rebound in a full leather binding with gilt compartments and titles to spine and gilt decoration to board corners. The binding is in very good clean condition with light corner wear. There is the bookplate of O and H Brunner to the front pastedown endpaper. Contents: frontispiece; decorative title with signature of Edwd Olive to the top; letterpress title; letter from Bosman 5pp; preface 11pp; text in letter format pp 1-520 with 19 fold out plates (1-11 of castles, 12-17 of natural history, and 18-19 of scenes); finis. The contents are very clean. There are some small edge tears and a paper flaw to the letterpress title; and some small repaired tears to a few plates. Plate 11 has some browning. P 83 has an old repaired tear to the bottom margin.