Engraver Theodor de Bry’s version of Thomas Hariot and John White’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, $12,500 (£9875) at Leland Little.
Hariot published A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, with White composing a suite of watercolours illustrating the region’s flora and fauna, including the native peoples.
The efforts of both men came to the attention of Belgian engraver Theodor de Bry, who published a combined work with Hariot’s text and a series of engravings based on White’s original watercolours. De Bry chose to liken Roanoke as a garden of Eden and its native inhabitants to the ancient Britons and Scots.
Printed in English, Latin, French and German, it proved hugely influential in encouraging European settlement of the vast lands that would become British North America.
Expertly conserved
A first-edition copy in Latin printed in Frankfurt in 1590 was offered at Leland Little (18% buyer’s premium) in Hillsborough, North Carolina, on December 1.
Deemed ‘a very good copy with all plates and map’ it had been expertly conserved and bound in leather-covered boards by Don Etherington, director of the Book Conservation Program at the American Academy of Bookbinding.
There were hopes of $20,000 but it sold short of this at $12,500 (£9875).
