Relation du voyage du royaume d'Issyny, Côte d'Or, Païs de Guinée en Afrique...

Second edition, the first having appeared in 1714 (with identical collation: 6 unnumbered preliminary leaves and 298 pages).

Illustrated with 8 finely engraved plates (cf. Gay, 2858bis).

Complete title: Relation du voyage du royaume d'Issyny, Côte d'Or, Païs de Guinée en Afrique. La description du païs, les inclinations, les moeurs, & la religion des habitans : avec ce qui s'y est passé de plus remarquable dans l'établissement que les François y ont fait. Le tout exactement recueilli sur les lieux, par le R. Pere Godefroy Loyer, préfet apostolique des Missions des FF. Prêcheurs, aux Côtes de Guinée en Afrique, Religieux du Convent de Bonne-nouvelle de Rennes en Bretagne.

Contemporary half brown sheep, spine with five raised bands ruled and decorated in gilt, gilt head- and tail-pieces, red morocco label, marbled paper-covered boards with some rubbing, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, heraldic bookplate pasted to the front pastedown, edges tinted red (faded in parts); the spine has been expertly restored in period style and tooling.

Scattered minor foxing, front endpaper starting to detach, final two blank leaves soiled.

Godefroy Loyer (born in Rennes in 1660, died in Paris in 1715) was Apostolic Prefect of the Dominican missions on the Guinea coast and a friar of the Bonne-Nouvelle convent in Rennes, Brittany. He spent two years in Assinie (part of present-day Côte d’Ivoire) from June 1701 to March 1703 and served as the first Apostolic Prefect of this region of West Africa, where the French briefly established Fort Saint-Louis, which was abandoned in 1704 due to economic concerns, as merchants favored the slave trade over the gold trade. A new fort was then established at Ouidah (now Benin), which became the largest European settlement on the Slave Coast.

“This account is of great value, in that it provides an in-depth view of a small region in Guinea, previously undescribed by any traveler (…) The customs and practices of Issyny share general traits with other peoples of Guinea, but many nuances set this small kingdom apart, and the author captures them remarkably well.” Cf. Boucher de La Richarderie, IV, 143.

The account of the Assinians' (called Issynians in the text) warrior customs includes a passage on the roles of black slaves serving local princes (pp. 260–261). Over the course of his career, Godefroy Loyer traveled to Martinique, Grenada, the Caribbean, and Africa. On his return to France, he stopped in Brazil, where illness forced him to remain for a full year [pp. 283–284]. Once recovered, he sailed aboard the Setouval, part of the Brazil fleet commanded by Captain Antoine Sauza.

Provenance: from the library of John Perceval, 1st Earl of Egmont (1683–1748), of the Irish peerage, with his handsome dated armorial bookplate (1736) pasted to the front pastedown.