Very rare: priced in Quaritch’s Rough List 88, (1888), no. 174 (cf. 181), at £125: the map alone at £40. See Wood’s Ath. Oxon., i. 650. The map of Virginia which follows p. 8 is about 1215
16 in. high × 16⅜ in. broad, taking the extreme limits of the copperplate (the inner bounding line is 12⅜ × 15¾ in.): the title “Virginia” is on a scroll, and below the Scale of Leagues is “Discovered and Discribed by Captain Iohn Smith | Grauen by William Hole”: at the top left corner (to the reader) is a picture of Powhatan in state, and at the top right corner a figure of a “Sasquesahanoug” man. This first state of the map ought not to have “1607” below the inscription about Powhatan, nor “1606” below the word “Smith” in the words below the Scale, nor “Page 41 | Smith” in the lower right corner, nor the latitude and longitude marks on any side except the base; all of which additions are on the reissue of the map in Smith’s General Historie of Virginia ... (Lond. 1624, fol.), and also in the reissue in Purchas his Pilgrimes, 4th part, Lond. 1625, except that instead of “Page 41 Smith” there is in the upper right (?) corner “1690,” a reference to the page.
The W. S. of the first part is the rev. William Simmonds, D.D. of Magd. Coll. Oxford, for some time a resident in Virginia, see Wood’s Ath. Oxon., ii. 142, while the publisher of both parts was Thomas Abbay. The whole of the first part with trifling changes is reprinted in Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia (London. 1624, fol.) bk. 2, p. 21: in Purchas his Pilgrimes (Lond. 1625, fol.) Lib. ix, ch. 3, p. 1691: and the second part, slightly abridged, in the same books, bk. 3, p. 41, where the glossary and map occur, but the 12th chap. is considerably altered: and ch. 4, p. 1705, respectively. The whole is carefully reprinted from the 1612 ed. by Edw. Arber in his English Scholar’s Library. Capt. John Smith ... Works. (Birmingham, 1884), from whose notes the following words are taken:—
[Preface to part 1].
“The first part of this Work is evidently an expanded and revised text of that “Mappe of the Bay and Rivers, with an annexed Relation of the Countries and Nations that inhabit them” (p. 444), which President John Smith sent home, about November 1608, to the Council in London, as the result of his explorations in Chesapeake Bay in the previous summer.
That this book of travels &c. should have been printed at the Oxford University Press is a most singular fact....
The hand printing presses in England were jealously registered, and locked up every night, to prevent surrepti[ti]ous printing; all through the lifetime of our Author: and the Company of Stationers of London especially watched with a keen jealousy the printing operations of the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, who each possessed a single hand press. See W. Herbert’s edition of J. Ames’s Typographical Antiquities, iii, 1398, Ed. 1790, 4to.
This solitary hand printing press at Oxford, usually produced sermons, theological and learned Works, &c.; in the midst of which, this book of travels crops up in a startling manner.
Why could not, or would not Smith get it printed in London? Had the revision of its second Part by the Rev. Dr. Simmonds anything to do with the printing at Oxford? These nuts we must leave for others to crack.
Of course, being printed at Oxford, this book was not registered at Stationer’s Hall, London ...
It is sometimes misnamed the Oxford tract; but it is rather a book than a tract.