Introduction to A Map of Virginia: With a Description of the Countrey, the Commodities, People, Government and Religion. by A. G. Bradley

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The first part of this Work is evidently an expanded and revised text of that "Mappe of the Bay and Rivers, with an annexed Relation of the Countries and Nations that inhabit them" (p. 444), which President John Smith sent home, about November 1608, to the Council in London, as the result of his explorations in Chesapeake Bay in the previous summer. That this book of travels &c. should have been printed at the Oxford University Press is a most singular fact.

The Earl of Leicester, then the Chancellor of the University, gave, in 1585, that University a new printing press: and Joseph Barnes was, at the same time, appointed University Printer, which office he held till his death, about 1617.

The hand printing presses in England were jealously registered, and locked up every night, to prevent surreptitious printing; all through the lifetime of our Author: and the Company of Stationers of London especially watched with a keen jealousy the printing operation of the single hand press. See W. Herbert's edition of J. Ames Typographical Antiquities, iii, 1398, Ed. 1790, 4to.

This solitary hand printing press at Oxford, usually produced sermons, theological and learned Works, &c.; in the midst of which, this book of travels crops up in a startling manner.

Why could not, or would not SMITH get it printed in London? Had the revision of its second Part by the Rev. Dr. SIMMONDS anything to do with the printing at Oxford? These nuts we must leave for others to crack. Of course, being printed at Oxford, this book was not registered at Stationer's Hall, London.

For its bibliography, see p. cxxx: from which it would appear, that, while the eight other Works of Captain SMITH have been reprinted once or oftener during the last century, this is the first reprint of the Map of Virginia as it originally appeared. It is sometimes misnamed the Oxford tract; but it is rather a book than a tract.