MENDEZ PINTO, Fernan - Lot 115

MENDEZ PINTO, Fernan Les Voyages advantureux, faithfully translated from Portuguese into French by Sieur Bernard Figuier. Paris, Antoine Continet and Jean Roger, 1645. In-4 (212 x 161 mm) of 4 ff.n.ch., 1020 pp. 6 ff.n.ch. of table. Stiff vellum, smooth spine (modern binding). Cordier, BS, 2067; Cordier, BJ, 37-38; Palau, 163206; Chadenat, 151; Brunet, IV, 670; Howgego, P99. Second French edition of this important work of travel literature written by one of the first Europeans to set foot in Japan. This edition is dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu. Particularly notable for its early criticism of Portuguese colonialism, the account resembles an autobiographical novel, describing the author's sensational travels in the Middle and Far East, including China, Japan (where he met Francis Xavier in 1551), Sumatra, Java, Siam, and Malaysia. Early in his journey, Pinto was captured by Muslim pirates and taken to Mocha as a slave, but he regained his freedom through a Jewish merchant who took him to the Portuguese Ormus, from where he continued his journey to Goa. Composed between 1569 and 1578 by the Portuguese adventurer and merchant Pinto (ca. 1514-83) and published only 31 years after the author's death, the work was translated into Spanish, French, English, Dutch, and German by the seventeenth century and remains to this day a relevant source for early modern Asian history, despite questions about its historical accuracy. A few browned quires, halos near the end, head margin a bit short with pp. 1003/1004 touched by the binder's knife. Provenance: religious library (handwritten note S. Eligii Paris and wet stamp on title).