RALEGH’S LAST VOYAGE

Limited edition: 379 pages, frontispiece portrait, title page vignette, 2 folding maps, uncut fore edge and bottom edges, many pages unopened, brown cloth boards, with a debossed blind stamped crest on the upper cover, vellum spine – which is faded, title gilt on the spine.

The colophon reads; This editionis the Twelfth publication of the Argonaut Press, and is limited to 775 copies on Japon Vellum, numbered 1 to 775. The original wood cut appearing on the title page is by William Monk. This volume has been printed by Walter Lewis at the University Press, Cambridge in 1935.

This copy is number - (unnumbered)

From the Preface: 

THE circumstances of Ralegh's final enterprise have been the subject of heated controversy ever since he himself produced his Apologie and James I responded with the Declaration. Learned and acute investigators such as Dr S. R. Gardiner, Mr J. A. Spedding, and Mr Macvey Napier examined the evidence which was then available with minute attention, and a long succession of biographers have told and re-told the story from the same materials.

The justification of the present volume lies in the fact that it brings together for the first time all the important letters and official documents of English origin relating to the episode, a number of which were not known to previous writers, and at the same time presents entirely new evidence drawn from contemporary Spanish sources. English captains, government spies, Spanish eye-witnesses, friends and foes, combine to give their testimony. In consequence a much fuller and greatly altered story emerges. The voices, as may be imagined, are not always harmonious, and the reader will frequently be obliged to weigh conflicting statements in the balance of his judgement. History must always remain an imaginative creation on the part of the observer; but as the data recovered from the past accumulate, it is possible to bring historical presentation into a closer relation with the truth. Such is the aim of the present work.