Sold for $4,500

3 volumes, 4to (274 x 218 mm). 51 engraved plates, maps and charts (of 52 as in early issues without the "Straights of Magellan" plate), including 41 folding. (A few minor spots or browning, some light offsetting of text to plates.) Contemporary calf gilt (neatly rebacked preserving original lettering-pieces and endpapers). Provenance: Count Gerard De Visme (1726-1797), Ambassador to Lisbon (armorial bookplate); D. José Luís de Sousa, 1st Earl of Vila Real (1785-1855), Portuguese diplomat and politician (signatures and stamps on titles).

 

FIRST EDITION, AN EARLY ISSUE, OF COOK’S FIRST VOYAGE, without the map of the “Streights of Magellan,” the description of plates with one erratum, and with the direction for placing the cuts and charts. “Cook earned his place in history by opening up the Pacific to western civilization and by the foundation of British Australia. The world was given for the first time an essentially complete knowledge of the Pacific Ocean and Australia” (PMM). Volume I contains the voyages of Byron, Carteret and Wallis, and describes the discovery of Tahiti; volumes II-III contain Hawkesworth’s edited account of Lieutenant Cook’s voyage (he was only promoted to Captain on his return). Cook added more than 5,000 miles of coastline to Admiralty charts for Tahiti, Australia and the Great Barrier Reef, and New Zealand, which he circumnavigated. Hill 783; PMM 223; Sabin 30934.