The Lusiad, or, Portugals Historicall Poem: Written in the Portingall Language by Luis de Camoens; and Now newly put into English by Richard Fanshaw Esq.

London, Printed for Humphrey Moseley, 1655.. First Edition in English. Folio (28 x 18.4 cm.), late nineteenth-century polished tan calf by Kaufman (slight wear), spine richly gilt with raised bands in six compartments, short author-title lettered in gilt in second compartment from head, marbled endleaves, text block edges tinted yellow. Engraved frontispiece portrait of a bust of Camões with verse beneath facing title page. Engraved folding plates of Prince Henry the Navigator (tear repaired) and Vasco da Gama (margins strengthened). Fine elaborate woodcut headpiece and large elegantly decorated factotum initial on leaf A2 recto (headpiece repeated on p. 1). Smaller factotum initial and typographical headpiece on leaf A3 verso. Typographical headpieces on leaves A4 recto and b2 verso. Nice woodcut initial on p. 1. title page backed and remargined. Tear to leaf A4 at inner margin crudely repaired. Overall in good condition. Bookplates of Henry Yates Thompson and Kenneth Rapoport. (10 ll.), 224 pp. [i.e., 226—there is an unnumbered leaf between pp. 46 and 47]. A4, a4, b2, B-Ff4. *** FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION. Sir Richard Fanshawe was English Ambassador to Spain and Portugal for some years.The portrait of Vasco da Gama is signed by Thomas Cross, who probably engraved the other two portraits as well. "This was Fanshawe's longest work and was written while he was living on parole at Tankersley Park, Yorkshire, as the guest of the dedicatee [William, Earl of Strafford]. Sir Richard Burton has declared that, despite the freedom of this translation, the author was thoroughly competent as a student of Portuguese. The editor of Fanshawe's letters in 1724 asserts that it was published without the translator's consent, and before 'he could put his last finishing stroaks'."—Pforzheimer.Camões' epic poem accounting Vasco da Gama's voyage to Africa and India in 1497-8 is one of the great literary monuments of European expansion and discovery. William Mickle, its eighteenth-century translator called it "the epic poem of the birth of commerce". The poet Lachlan Mackinnon, reviewing Laandeg White's new verse translation in the Times Literary Supplement of 12 February 1999, praised Fanshawe's version for its vivid detail, describing it as a "minor classic … which is, astonishingly, out of print".Provenance: Henry Yates Thompson (1838-1928), with note that he bought the book at Lisbon in 1886 for £6. Signature of A.E.F. Davis in upper outer corner of second front free endleaf recto. Kenneth Rapoport, distinguished collector of Cervantes.*** Wing C397. Pforzheimer 362. Innocêncio V, 273, mistakingly giving the date as 1654; on the translator, II, 322; IX, 346; XVIII, 199; Aditamentos 58. Pina Martins, Catálogo da exhibição bibliográfica 145.