The images portrayed in the copper plate engravings are of the highest artistic quality and the best copper engravings of their time.
When the first accounts of Spanish, English and French exploration to South and North America began to be published in the late 1580s, De Bry became interested in producing illustrated editions of these early reports to the Americas based on first hand observations by explorers.
The narratives in the Great Voyages are drawn from Principal Navigations, collected and published by Hakluyt without illustrations (1589).
Part 1 has the first engraved map of Virginia and was the basis for most European-based maps for 80 years. Engravings of the Virginian Algonquian Indians provide an insight into daily life and local customs, artefacts, rituals, hunting, fishing and dwellings.
Contained within the 13 parts are voyages of Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Drake, Raleigh and Cavendish. Also an account of Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire’s circumnavigation voyage of 1615-16 round Cape Horn.
De Bry’s work represented the first attempt to introduce to Europe on a large scale a pictorial image of the New World through the 290 engravings contained within the 13 parts
