294F Boemus, Johann (fl. 1500), William Watreman, trans. (fl. 1555?) 
The Fardle of facions conteining the aunciente maners, customes, and Lawes, of the peoples enhabiting the two partes of the earth, called Affrike and Asie.
Printed at London, by Jhon Kingstone, and Henry Sutton, 1555

$13,000

Octavo, 5.5 x 3.5 inches.  First edition. *4, B-Y8, Z4. This copy contains the two blanks: *4 and Z4, but lacks signature A, which contains the author’s preface. Only the last leaf of the author’s preface: leaf B1, is present in this copy. However, it is important to note that signature A was never bound with this book, and was not removed. This copy has been imperfect since day one.  

This is an exceptional copy, in a striking sixteenth century English binding. The boards are made up of sheets of sixteenth century printers’ waste, including a completely unrecorded broadside of a ballad. The binding has been recently and expertly rebacked and presents a stunning copy of this rare and fascinating work. 

This work contains English translations of two works: 1) Johann Boemus’s Omnium Gentium Mores, books one and two, and 2) book four, chapter eight, of Josephus’s Antiquitates Judaicae, both done by William Watreman.The first section, on Africa, begins with the creation of the world, continues with a brief account of Adam and Eve, and then moves on to Noah and the flood. By the third chapter, Boemus has begun to describe the divisions of the earth. He declares, citing Orosius, that there are three parts of the earth (really he means continents) and they are Africa, Asia, and Europe. He states that Africa is separated on the east from Asia by the Nile, which runs from Ethiopia into Egypt. Further, Africa is, according to Boemus, bounded on all other sides by the sea, shorter but broader than Europe, with mountains rising up in the middle of the continent, and ending in a “narrowe poincte.” The orthography in the following passages has been partially modernized to make reading easier. “Asmuch as is inhabited thereof, is plentuous soil, but the great part of it lieth waste, void of inhabitants, either too hot for men to abide, or full of noisome and venemous vermin, and beasts, or else so whelmed in sand and gravel, that there is nothing but mere barrenness.” A description of food crops grown in North Africa exuberantly describes the superlative dimensions of different vegetables: “their clusters of grapes […] a cubit long, their garden thistles (which we call Hortichockes) and fennel twelve cubits compass.” The descriptions of the animals are fabulous, employing some unfamiliar animal names. “Africa hath also many sundry beasts, and dragons that lie in wait for the beasts, and when they see time, so bewrap and wreate them about, that taking from them the use of their joints, they weary them and kill them. There are elephants, lions, bugles, pardales, roes, and apes, in some places without number. There are also chamelopardales and rhizes, like unto bulls, asses with horns, wild rams, a beast engendered of the hyena and wolf named thoas, panthers, storks, ostriches, and many kinds of serpents.” He states that the people of Africa are “thought to have been  the first of all men, and those which of all other may trueliest be called home-borne people. Never under the bondage of any: but ever a free nation. The first way of worshipping God was devised and taught among them: with the manners and ceremonies there to appertinent.” Boemus also gives Africans credit for devising the first system of writing. A chapter is devoted to the history and culture of Egypt, and includes descriptions of the embalming of deceased people and animals.This book contains many astounding descriptions and anecdotes, but its content is peculiar, and at times troubling. In some ways, it may mark the beginning of Western European racism, and several modern commentators have examined the text in this light. Reading the black letter and the strange spellings, one is palpably aware of the antiquity of the text. What a different world it was in 1555. America doesn’t even enter the discussion. What was it like to read this book in England in 1555? The sixteenth century marginal notes in an English hand provide a vivid spur to imagination as we read this copy. This  is undoubtedly one of the very earliest works of ethnography in English. The study of this book will yield ideas and images that were as diverse and surprising then as now.According to Sitwell, this is the first edition in English of this work, which was later reprinted in the 1598 edition of Hakluyt’s Principal Voyages. It was also the primary source for Shakespeare’s understanding of African or ‘Moorish’ customs, contributing greatly to the composition of Othello.  

STC 3197; ESTC S102775; title border McKerrow & Ferguson 33; the following U.S. libraries hold copies: Huntington; Yale; Newberry; Harvard; U. of Minnesota; John Carter Brown; U. of Texas, Austin; and Folger.