Sold for $3,493

(London: Rafe Newberie and Henrie Denham, 1584). First edition. 8vo. (xvi), 22, (2, blank), 401, (1), (12) pp. Translated into English by Humphrey Llwyd. Edited by David Powel. Text printed in gothic and roman type. Title-page printed within ornate architectural woodcut border and illustrated with numerous woodcut portraits, armorial shields, initials, and head- and tail-pieces. Full brown calf, stamped in blind, red morocco spine label, lettered in gilt, joints and spine rubbed; top edge stained black, other edges trimmed; contemporary ownership signature crossed out at top of title-page; contemporary ownership signature at top of ¶ii; scattered light dampstaining in margins; scattered contemporary marginalia; small booksellers ticket at bottom of rear paste-down. Sabin 40914; USTC 509953

A handsome copy of the “first and rarest of all editions” (Sabin) of the first printed history of Wales. Covering Welsh history and royalty from the 7th to 13th centuries, this work is largely compiled of medieval chronicles about Wales by 12th-century Welsh ecclesiastic and historian, Caradoc of Llancarfan. It notably includes an account of the mythical Welsh voyage to the New World in 1170 by Prince Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd—300 hundred years before Columbus.

In the 16th-century Caradoc's work was translated into English and greatly expanded by Welsh cartographer and historian Humphrey Llwyd (1527-68), but by the time of his death it remained unpublished. In 1573 Llwyd's manuscript passed into the hands of Welsh minister David Powel, who, with the assistance of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, further expanded and revised the material and published the above first edition, in 1584.