Raleigh ( Sir Walter):”[The Historie of the World in five Bookes]”. [London 1614] First edition of one influential book in Human history. Folio 34x23cm,contemporary leather over boards rubbed, without the title page and the portrait almost as all the first editions copies,[37] 555p.,669p.[79] and the 7 maps (detached, some with few misfolds and frayed at edges) and the illustrations as called for, overall a good copy.Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618) was an English politician, explorer, writer and officer .He travelled a lot around the world and became confident of Queen Elizabeth .With the death of the Queen in 1603 Raleigh was arrested and remained imprisoned for several years .While in prison he wrote the first volume of his History of the World (no other volume has been written) which covers the ancient history of Greece up to the arrival of the Romans. Raleigh was fully abreast of the latest continental scholarship and although he wrote not about England ,but on ancient Greece ,with an emphasis on geography ,his history is full of several indirect allusions in contemporary political situation in England..He tried to publish his history in 1614, but the new regime ordered the confiscation, from all the printed copies, of his portrait and of the title ,so no one could be able to make the links with Raleigh…Almost all copies have been confiscated ,checked and their title pages and portraits of the author (some time even the plates) detached and destroyed .After his death in 1618 ,other editions followed with no worries. It is a very early comprehensive and valuable History of Greece which strongly influenced English society, richly illustrated with fine early maps of the Levant. According a poll by Guardian during 2009, Raleigh s Historie of the World (practically a History of Ancient Greece) is among the 100 more influential books ever published .Rare. Dated 1614 at the Colophon