Olympia-2015

Western Indian Ocean (1878-1882). The Report was prepared by scientific expertsfor a scholarly audience, and edited by staff-surgeon R.W. Coppinger. ‘With theexception of the “Challenger” Expedition, none of the recent voyages hascontributed so much to our knowledge of the Littorial Invertebrate Fauna of theIndo-Pacific Ocean as that of the “Alert”’ (Preface, p. v). The 3,700 specimensgathered and interpreted at the request of the Hydrographer of the Navy, Captain(later Sir Frederick) Evans, F.R.S., not only belong to 1,300 species, but alsocontributed greatly to the collections of the British Museum: a third of themconstituted new additions to the Museum’s holdings. They includes skulls ofindigenous peoples, birds, reptiles, fish, lepidoptera, sponges and many otherspecimens.Rare on the market: only one other copy can be traced in Anglo-American auctionrecords since 1975.‘COMMENDATORY’ VERSE BY SIXTY JACOBEAN POETS29. CORYATE, Thomas. Coryats Crudities hastily gobled up in five monethsTravells in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia ... Switzerland ... high Germany and theNetherlands ... [Letterpress title:] Three crude Veines [etc.] London, Printed byW[illiam] S[tansby], 1611.Thick small 4to., pp. [196], 364, [23], 366-393, [23], 395-398, 403-655, [51], withan engraved title-page (slightly soiled, shaved at head, old repair to foot on verso),four plates (three folding) and two engravings in the text by William Hole; gatheringb 4 (‘A Character of the Authour’) bound between a3 and a4, the bifolium a4-5 (alate insertion), loose, the rest of this confusing set of prelims secured at the headby a contemporary reader with a pin; the Verona Theatre plate with with a neatearly repair to the verso, the ‘Clock of Strasbourg’ shaved as very often; withal verygood, fresh copy in contemporary mottled calf, neatly rebacked; early ownershipinscriptions of ‘Jhon Jhonson’, dated 1613, to title verso (later crossed through inpen), with purchase note ‘pre 7s’ to front endpaper; armorial bookplate of Sir HenryMainwaring. £12,500First edition of this famously eccentric book of travels, one of the most curiousbooks of its era. Tom Coryate, the relatively aimless son of a Somerset rector, leftGloucester Hall, Oxford, with no degree, and became a hanger-on at the court ofJames I. He was a kind of self-celebrating buffoon, the willing butt of manypractical jokes (he once ‘appeared’ inside a locked trunk in a masque at court), buthe was also a good linguist with a good memory, which fitted him for his celebratedpedestrian adventure. In 1608, having inherited a little money, he spent fivemonths in and between forty-five cities in Europe, travelling often on foot, but alsoby boat, horse, coach and cart, and upon his return wrote an account of his tourwhich is simultaneously valuable (it was for a long time the only ‘handbook’ toforeign travel in English) and absurd, for its earnest and ploddingly literalrecitation of trivial or embarrassing events. He provides, among other things, theearliest account of William Tell in English.Over two years Coryate had trouble finding a publisher, and finally undertook to behis own, but in the meantime he sought and obtained an incredible quantity of‘commendatory’ verse--108 quarto pages of it, by over sixty living poets, virtually apoetical miscellany in itself. The contributors seem to revolve around Ben Jonsonand his ‘Mermaid Tavern group’: they include Jonson himself, John Donne,