OWNED BY A FRIEND OF MANUTIUS
SOONE, William, and Pomponius MELA.
Gulielmi Sooni Vantesdeni Auditor, sive Pomponius Mela disputator, De situ orbis.
Cologne, Johann Birckman, 1572.
8vo, ff. [viii], 184 [i.e. 186], [2]; woodcut device to title, woodcut initials; text block uniformly lightly toned, lower corner of last leaves water-stained; bound in contemporary limp vellum, ink titling on spine and on lower edge; foot of spine restored and book recased in the original vellum; inscription of Giulio Cesare Ballino to title (see below); modern exlibris C. Zuccardi stamped on top margin of title-page.
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Gulielmi Sooni Vantesdeni Auditor, sive Pomponius Mela disputator, De situ orbis.
First edition of English jurist and cartographer William Soone’s notes on Pomponius Mela’s geography, presented in the form of an imaginary dialogue between the two authors.
Soone left England for the Continent upon refusing to conform to the Church of England and deciding to continue to profess Catholicism. This commentary on Mela was produced in Cologne.
Provenance: This copy comes from the library of the Venetian lawyer Giulio Cesare Ballino (d. c. 1592), a friend of Paulus Manutius and Aldus the Younger who acted as a corrector for an Aldine edition of Livy, and the author of De’ disegni delle piu illustri citta et fortezze del mondo (Venice, 1569), a notable book of urban design for which the reading of Pomponio Mela’s and William Soone’s cartography will doubtlessly have been of importance.
VD16 2323.
