Joannis Bisselii, è Societate Jesu, Argonauticon Americanorum, sive, historiæ periculorum Petri de Victoria, ac sociorum eius, Libri XV

12mo. f. [1] (blank), pp. [24], 480, [12], f. [1] (blank). Contemporary vellum. Engraved title by Wolfgang Kilian, and a full-page map of the Americas (featuring California as a peninsula, not an island). Printer's device on title page. Includes engraved initials, tailpiece.

First edition of a semi-fictional adaptation of the youthful voyage to Panama of Pedro Gobeo (or Goveo) de Victoria (ca.1560-1630), first published in Spanish (‘Naufragio y peregrinacion de Pedro Gobeo de Vitoria, natural de Sevilla, escrito por él mismo […].’ Seville, 1610) and then translated into German (‘Wunderbarliche und seltzame Raiss Dess Jungen und Edlen Herrn Petri de Victoria Auss Hispanien in das Königreich Peru [...],‘ Ingolstadt, 1622). Bissel, a poet, historian and geographical miscellanist, based his Latin version on the German one, but Harold C. Hill (“Johann Bissel’s Argonauticon Americanorum (1647): a reexamination,” in: Modern Language Notes, 85 (1970), pp. 652-662), found that he used his source more as ‘raw material for his own text’ than for literal translation, and Alden and Landis (European Americana: a chronological guide to works printed in Europe relating to the Americas, 1493-1776. New York, 1980, II, 647/28) call the Argonauticon ‘merely a novel,’ which, given Bissel's elaborate documentation and prefatory disclaimers, might open him to the charge of literary forgery. See J. Sabin, A dictionary of books relating to America, from its discovery to the present time. New York, 1962, 99443.

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