Apparently unique compilation of the six constituent volumes of the English Pilot bound in two, lacking all the inserted charts, but the text complete, retaining the engraved charts in the text (notably in the ‘Fourth Book’: Antigua, Barbados and Bermuda), with the woodcuts and engravings in fine original wash colour. There is no indication of the charts having been removed; it may be that they were originally bound separately or not purchased at all.
The individual volumes of the English Pilot series were the best available English chart books for much of the eighteenth century. The series was begun by John Seller in 1671, with the Northern Navigation, and 1672, Southern Navigation and subsequently expanded by Seller, his successors and heirs with the Mediterranean Pilot (1677), West-India Pilot (1689), West African Pilot (1701) and Oriental Navigation (1703).
As a working book, individual editions of the various volumes can be rare. This group, put together at the time of the Seven Years’ War / French and Indian War contains several rare printings, but the real significance is the assemblage of the volumes together and the exceptional original colouring throughout, these volumes clearly intended for library use, hence the colouring and fine internal condition.
Locations:
Coasting Pilot (title-page only): ESTC N44114: only Folger Shakespeare
English Pilot Southern: apparently unrecorded, but cf. ESTC N47593.
Northern: unrecorded in ESTC.
Mediterranean: ESTC N69402: recording the Yale and New York Public Library copies, to which can be added a copy in the National Maritime Museum.
West Africa: unrecorded in ESTC; with a copy in the National Maritime Museum.
Oriental Navigation: ESTC T218365: recording the Cambridge and National Maritime Museum copies.
West India Navigation: ESTC N69401: recording only the Yale copy, with further copies in the Library of Congress and Dartmouth College Library.
