51 BAUMAN RARE BOOKS First edition of Jamestown’s Robert Beverley’s history of Virginia—”after John Smith, the first account of this colony, the first one penned by a native and the best contemporary record of its aboriginal tribes and of the life of its early settlers” (Howes)—wonderfully illustrated with engraved armorial frontispiece and 14 full-page “fine engravings” (Sabin) after Gribelin. Beverley was prominent in the colony’s government. “Following the fire that destroyed the statehouse in Jamestown on October 20, 1698, [his half-brother] Peter and Robert Beverley salvaged and arranged the valuable surviving public papers. Beverley… was subsequently elected to represent Jamestown in the House of Burgesses in 1699-1700,” (Ruggles, Encyclopedia Virginia). On sailing to England in 1703, Beverley there published the first edition of this work in 1705. His History remains “an unmatched source for the Virginia of its time” (Ruggles). Jefferson in his Notes on Virginia, observes that this work comprises “our history, from the first propositions of Sr. Walter Raleigh to the year 1700” (Sowerby 503). Text and plates fresh and fine. A wonderful copy. 57(BEVERLEY, Robert). The History And Present State of Virginia. London, 1705. Octavo, periodstyle speckled brown calf gilt. $16,000 “The First Published History Of A British Colony By A Native Of North America”
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