Books

Venice: F. Renner de Hailbrun, 1478.. 48 leaves. Small quarto. Handsome brown morocco, tooled and paneled in gilt, spine gilt, raised bands, gilt inner dentelles, a.e.g. Front hinge repaired. Several small but persistent worm holes, several early marginal notes. A very nice, large copy of an important edition. Noted scholar Boies Penrose's copy, with his bookplate on the front free endpaper. Pomponius Mela is often taken as an accurate sum of European geographical knowledge before the discovery of the New World. This handsome Venetian edition is one of two printed in the city in that year, and they are among the earliest published geographical works. The publications of Mela and Ptolemy were incentives for further exploration, and in particular Mela's descriptions of Africa were used by the Portuguese navigators who were venturing far out into the Atlantic for the first time. GOFF M450. BMC V:195. JCB (3)I:9. HAIN 11017. PENROSE SALE 196.

De situ orbis is an early geographical work by Pomponius Mela, providing detailed descriptions of the world as known to the Romans in the 1st century AD.