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GAZZETTIERE AMERICANO. Il Gazzettiere Americano, contenente un distinto Ragguaglio di Tutte le Parti del Nuovo Mondo.

Livorno, Marco Coltellini., 1763.

Three volumes, folio (316x 230 mm.), XXIII, 216 pages, 1 leaf, 31 plates; 256 pages, 1 leaf, 23 plates; 253 pages, 1 leaf. Engraved frontispiece, 3 title-page vignettes, etched tail-pieces throughout and 78 full-page engraved plates of which 24 are folding. A very fine set with all the illustrations colored, in contemporary Italian stiff vellum, gilt title on spines.

First edition of this luxurious Italian eighteenth-century topographical dictionary of the New World. The work was first published in English a year earlier in an inferior 12mo-format, illustrated only with eight small maps. This Italian edition is virtually a new work, printed in the eighteenth-century rich Italian style on thick paper, with elegant full-page illustrations, folding plates of harbour views, etc. “A comparison of the entries [between the English and Italian editions] shows that although the words were translated literally, the printer, Marco Coltellini, has elevated the cramped, unattractive English original into a handsome book, and the visual effect of the Italian edition is strikingly superior. Because it is a translation of an English work, there is much more information about the English colonies in America than is found in most geographical books written by continental authors up to this time.” (Hough, Italians and the Making of America, 81) The text attempts to cover all aspects of the Americas: the land, climate, commerce, goods, government, cities, rivers, mountains, peoples and customs; it is particularly impressive, however, concerning the flora and fauna. A majority of the etched plates are devoted to the indigenous animal and agricultural enterprises, such as a sugar plantation, native cotton manufacturing, tobacco processing, fisheries, and beaver dams, with individual plates of bison, wolverines, porcupines, penguins, Brazilian monkeys, and numerous birds. There are scenes of Barbados, Jamaica, New England, Hudson's Bay, Newfoundland, the Great Lakes, Santo Domingo, Florida, Havana, Lima, Acapulco, Santiago, Boston, New York, Niagara Falls, Quebec, and much more.

Borba p. 347: “This translation of the American Gazetteer [3 vols., London, 1762], is practically a new work, having been greatly enlarged, and with eighty plates and maps engraved for this edition.” Cox II, 131; Howes A-207; Phillips, Atlases 1161; Sabin 26814.