£2,268
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs | 725
Auction: 8 February 2023 at 10:00 GMT
performed in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779. Faithfully narrated from the Original MS. London: for E. Newbery, 1781. 8vo (21 x 12cm), contemporary calf, [4] xlvi 388 [i.e. 396] pp., engraved folding frontispiece showing the death of Cook in Hawaii, folding chart, 4 plates, engraved bookplate (Thomas Crawfurd, motto 'Deo juvante', 19th-century annotations to rear endpapers headed 'Written by an heritor in a country church on hearing the clergyman of the parish deliver rather a more animated lecture than usual', rubbed, superficial cracking to joints, loss to head of spine, offsetting, frontispiece with short split to foot of one fold, chart slightly spotted and marked, a few marks elsewhere [Cross, In the Land of the Romanovs, D31; ESTC T144513; Forbes, Hawaiian National Bibliography, 33; Sabin 36707]
Note:
First edition of the first published account of Cook's final voyage, Forbes's state C ('the exact priority not established'). Published anonymously and in contravention of orders from the Admiralty, Rickman's work preceded by three years the official account of the voyage, in which it was included as a supplement; the description of the return visit to Hawaii in 1778-9 is especially important, containing information not found elsewhere.