Thomas Hariot

A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia presents an early and vivid depiction of one of the first English encounters with North America. The work documents the geography, flora, fauna, and people of Virginia, combining observation with persuasion to promote the promise of colonization. It highlights the abundance of natural resources, from fertile soil and abundant wildlife to valuable plants and minerals, portraying the land as rich with potential for settlement and trade. Alongside these descriptions, the book provides insight into the agricultural practices and social customs of the indigenous population, showing both curiosity and admiration for their way of life. The narrative serves as both a scientific record and a strategic appeal to investors, emphasizing the economic and cultural opportunities the New World offered. Through its detailed and measured tone, the work bridges exploration and advocacy, becoming one of the foundational texts that shaped European perceptions of America.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

For more than 400 years, scholars from an array of disciplines have recognized Theodor de Bry's 1590 edition of Thomas Hariot's ""A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia"" as a book whose influence shaped contemporary European perceptions of North America, as well as subsequent research on that period for centuries to come. The book, upon which the present volume is based, is from the collections of the Library at the Mariners' Museum. It is extremely rare, containing hand-colored illustrations from the period, and is one of only three recorded copies with colored plates. This complete facsimile edition presents de Bry's exceptional engravings, based on John White's sixteenth-century watercolors, in their original hand-colored form. The book is available in paperback and as a limited cloth edition of two hundred numbered copies. Both editions are printed by the award-winning Stinehour Press. As the first volume in de Bry's celebrated ""Grand Voyages"", a series of publications chronicling many of the earliest expeditions to the Americas, this book, which incorporates a 1588 text by Thomas Hariot, was illustrated and published in four languages. It became for many Europeans their first glimpse of the American continent. Accompanying the Latin facsimile is an English text. The first section is modernized from earlier versions of the English, and the second part, which accompanies the plates, is newly translated from the original Latin. In addition to a valuable introduction, the book includes two illuminating essays. The first, by Karen Ordahl Kupperman, examines the early American settlement and tells how a collaboration between the writer and mathematician Thomas Hariot and the artist John White (later governor of the Roanoke Colony) evolved into a rich study not only of English colonial life but of the Indian culture and the natural resources of the region. The second essay, by Peter Stallybrass, uncovers new information in the much studied plates and presents an intriguing theory about the creation and importance of the engravings. This facsimile edition will appeal to students and scholars in several fields of study, from American history and ethnography to fine arts and the history of the book, and will provide the reader with the best illustration of the New World as it was first presented to the Old.