JOANNIS CAMERTIS, IN C. IULII SOLINI [POLYHISTORIA] ENARRATIONES.

From the collection of R. David Parsons. Caius Julius Solinus' Polyhistor, containing the famous double-page cordiform map by Peter Apianus: a cornerstone of American cartography and "the earliest obtainable map to name America" (Burden). Apianus' world map was issued bound into the 1520 Camertius edition of Solinus' Polyhistor, a classical work of geographical history largely based on works by the Elder Pliny and Pomponius Mela. The map depicts two large landmasses west of Africa: the little-known North American coast, here simply called "Terra incognita," and the larger, more detailed South American continent, with the region's new name prominently displayed within a statement praising the voyager who discovered it: "Anno d 1497 haec terra cum adiacentibus insulis inuenta est per Columbum Ianuensem ex mandato Regis Castellae AMERICA prouincia." The map was modeled by Apianus after Waldseemüller's original cordiform wall-map of 1507. Waldseemüller's map, known in a single copy acquired in 2002 to great acclaim by the Library of Congress, was the first cartographic work to identify the new continent with the place-name "America." Though Waldseemüller first suggested the term in his pamphlet Cosmographiae Introductio, which accompanied his world map of 1507, controversy soon arose regarding Vespucci's actual achievements, and Waldseemüller did not use it in his two 1513 atlas maps, nor in his Carta Marina wall map of 1516. The term's re-adoption was doubtless facilitated by Apianus' prestige as a scholar and cartographer. His protégé, Laurent Fries, for instance, whose initials appear in the map's lower-left corner and who is credited by Shirley as its co-draftsman or wood-engraver, published his own edition of the 1513 Waldseemüller atlas in 1522, restoring the name "America" to its first world map; the Apianus map also appeared in a 1522 edition of Mela's De Situ Orbis with the name intact. Though Apianus' map is modeled almost exactly after Waldseemüller's and is indeed the first obtainable derivative of the twelve-sheet map of 1507 there is also a notable difference in their depictions of South America. Waldseemüller does not show the southern portion of the continent, as the current geographical convention held that South America eventually merged with an enormous, undiscovered Southern Continent. Apianus, however, clearly terminates the southern limit of South America well above the south polar regions. Though this conception of South America was only made possible by Magellan's circumnavigation still under sail in 1520 the explanation may lay in the fact that Apianus was working from a medieval geographic model that insisted on a balance of landmasses, and thus the correspondence of the southern extremes of South America and Africa. ADAMS S-1391. BORBA DE MORAES, p.818. BURDEN 11. CHURCH 45. EUROPEAN AMERICANA 520/25. HARRISSE (BAV) 108. HARRISSE NOTES ON COLUMBUS, p.175. HUTH 1372. JCB (3)I:77. LeCLERC (Supplement) 2686. ROSENBACH 20:716. SABIN 86390. SHIRLEY, MAPPING OF THE WORLD 45. See also: Donald L. McGuirk, "The Forgotten 'First Map with the Name of AMERICA'" in The Portolan, Issue 77 (Spring 2010), pp.26-36. Folio. Recased in contemporary half pigskin and beveled wooden boards, rebacked with original spine laid down, early brass clasps. Early manuscript note on front board, boards a bit rubbed and soiled. Endpapers renewed, faded ownership inscription on titlepage, faint waterstain in gutter of a few signatures. Map trimmed at top and bottom outside the woodcut border, but affecting the words "Septentrio" and "Meridies" in the upper and lower margin, creases from old fold with minor discoloration in right margin. Very good.…