The Historie of the World. Commonly called, the Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus. Translated into English by Philemon Holland Doctor in Physicke. The first [& Second] tome

London: Impensis G. Bishop, 1601. FIRST EDITION, second issue with cancel title page. Hardcover. Fine. Bound in contemporary English calfskin, ruled in blind, re-backed and re-cornered in morocco. An excellent copy internally with very minor faults. A few signatures have very marginal damp-stains, there are occasional rust spots, minor marginal tears, and a few natural paper flaws (no loss to text.) The first title page features an elaborate architectural border with Solomonic columns. "The 'Natural History' of Pliny the Elder is more than a natural history: it is an encyclopaedia of all the knowledge of the ancient world... It comprises 37 books with mathematics and physics, geography and astronomy, medicine and zoology, anthropology and physiology, philosophy and history, agriculture and mineralogy, the arts and letters... The 'Historia' soon became a standard book of reference; abstracts and abridgements appeared by the third century. Bede owned a copy, Alcuin sent the early books to Charlemagne, and Dicuil, the Irish geographer, quotes him in the ninth century. It was the basis of Isidore's Etymologiae and such medieval encyclopedias as the Speculum Majus of Vincent of Beauvais and the Catholicon of Balbus. One of the earliest books to be printed at Venice, the centre from which so much of classical literature was first dispensed, it was later translated into English by Philemon Holland in 1601, and twice reprinted (a notable achievement for so vast a text)... Over and over again it will be found that the source of some ancient piece of knowledge is Pliny." (PMM 5)

"Holland's first book, the first complete rendering of Livy into English, was published in 1600 when he was nearly fifty. It was a work of great importance, presented in a grand folio volume of 1458 pages, and dedicated to the queen. ...

"The Livy was followed in the next year by an equally huge translation, of the elder Pliny: The Historie of the World, Commonly called, the Naturall Historie. This encyclopaedia of ancient knowledge about the natural world had already had a great indirect influence in England, as elsewhere in Europe, but had not been translated into English before, and would not be again for 250 years."(ODNB).