This book is based on Auction Sale No. 40 held April 3rd & 4th, 1989 by the Auction House Reiss & Auvermann. It comprises a collection of rare books about the age of exploration and the history of Portugal and Spain. Amongst the books referred to, with respect to the centuries of early exploration (AD 1500 to AD 1700), was a considerable number of items of great rarity and their hammer price rather often achieved many times the estimate. The contents of these books in many cases were so unusual that the brief comments printed in the auction catalogue needed additional explanation. Therefore, I made a selection of those 140 titles that seemed to me the most interesting and important ones. I added the original printed versions of more than 300 letters written by Jesuit missionaries (bound in 23 volumes and brochures, including some collective volumes or sammelbands) to their General in Rome between 1549 and 1629, mostly from Japan. Ample information, not only about the Christian mission, but also about the political situation in Japan in those days at the time when the Empire of the Rising Sun suffered from a disastrous civil war, is provided. Each entry in this book follows the same structure comprising four elements: 1. Author, title of the book, dates of printing, illustration, collation and binding. 2. Historical and bibliographical information. 3. Reference works. 4. Estimates, followed by hammer prices achieved, at that time in Deutsche Mark (DM). With a very few exceptions, we did not make use of abbreviations common in the antiquarian book trade. The ones used are pp. (page, pages); ll. (leaf, leaves); engr. (engraved); front. (frontispiece), cont. (contemporary). One of the key considerations for this volume is the practical benefits for western antiquarian booksellers if they happen to come across a book on this topic. This book not only gives detailed descriptions of each item, but also an indication as to pricing.

Godebert M Reiss (*1937) studied history and classical languages before he started working at an antiquarian bookshop in Duesseldorf as a trainee, from 1960 to 1965. From 1966 to 1970 he was the co-owner of the book auction house Wolfgang Brandes in Braunschweig. In the late 1970s he founded his own auction house in Mainz for manuscripts, valuable antiquarian books, historical maps and views of cities and towns. In 1975, the quickly growing company was transferred to Glashütten, located in Taunus, where he had a very successful partnership with the antiquarian bookseller Detlev Auvermann, a specialist in scientific books. After splitting from his partner in 1989, he relocated the company to Königstein in Taunus. His son Clemens Reiss, after studying for several years at home and abroad, joined the company which from then on was called Reiss and Son. Since 2002, Clemens Reiss has been mainly in charge of managing the company in conjunction with his father. After his father, the senior partner, departed from the management of the company in 2016, Clemens continued to run the company successfully and does so to this day. Godebert M. Reiss was able to auction off important libraries such as the Brito collection, the library of the Count of Schönborn Buchheim, large portions of the Princely Fürstenberg Court Library in Donaueschingen as well as the collection of the industrialist Hans L. Merkle from Stuttgart, thus facilitating the company's rise into the circle of book auction houses with worldwide recognition. Godebert M. Reiss managed the association of German antiquarians (VdA) as chairman of the board from 1976 until 1979 and again from 1986 until 1989. Between 1991 and 1992 he was vice president of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB).