Introductio Ad Latinam Blasoniam. An Essay to a More Correct Blason in Latine Than Formerly Hath Been Used......
London: Printed by J.M. For the Author, 1682. First Edition. Small Octavo. Item #031089
[1] pp ad, [12] 165 pp. [3]pp. several illustrations of coat of arms within the text . In 1659 [see note below] Gibbon sailed to Virginia where he lived for three years, working as estate manager for Richard Lee. He describes how he watched a group of Native Americans engage in a war dance. Their shields and bodies were colorfully painted in personal emblems (which led him to think they were a form of heraldry (pp. 155-157). From unprinted manuscripts of Gibbon we learn he brought with him from England books on husbandry, dictionaries, and a Bible. A copy of this first edition edited by him was obtained by the Library of Congress in 1943 and described by Frederick R. Goff, Chief of the Rare Book Division. In his notes, we learn that Colonel Lee was making 2000 pounds a year on his tobacco crops. Gibbon returned to England where his work on heraldry was produced while working at the College of Arms where he specialized in accounts of the role of heralds in European History. (note: DNB wrongly gives Gibbon's date of entry into Virginia at 1657 but see Martha W. Hiden and Henry M. Dargan, "John Gibbon's Manuscript Notes Concerning Virginia" in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 74, No. 1 (January, 1966), p. 1-22). A very scarce item with importance both for early Virginia and heraldry in the 17th century. Bound in old calf, early rebacking of unadorned leather retaining the original spine label, short surface split to upper joint near foot, edges worn with corners rounded, from the library of Enoch Robert Gibbon Salisbury [1819-1890] lawyer and bibliophile He collected a very large library of books on Wales and the Marches; today, the bulk of this collection forms the Salisbury Library ' at Cardiff University College, another name? dated 1945. A good copy.
Price: $315.00