A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY TO THE NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN, AND ROUND THE WORLD; in Which the Coast of North-West America Has Been Carefully Examined and Accurately Surveyed…
London: Printed for G.G. & J. Robinson, Paternoster-Row; and J. Edwards, Pall-Mall, 1798. First Edition. Hardcover. Quarto, three volumes: [8], xxxix, [1, blank], [8], 432 + [10], 504 + [10], 505, [3, errata] pp. with a copper-engraved map and 17 copper-engraved plates illustrating views on land and sea and natives. In modern three-quarter brown calf over marbled paper bindings, with red and green morocco spine labels, decorative gilt stamping, and new endpapers. Faint ink stamp of a historical society to a few prefatory and concluding leaves, with some evidence of attempted removal. Accompanied by a facsimile of the folio atlas volume, with 16 plates (most folding), in a matching binding. The Zamorano Eighty 77.
"[Vancouver’s] coastal survey of the area north of San Francisco was the most accurate that had been done to that time... His Voyage is important not only for the magnificent charts and splendid views that accompanied it, but also for the valuable and extensive amount of information that it provided on the Spanish settlements, the Indian tribes, and the physical features of the country that he visited. It is one of the ‘classics’ of the late eighteenth-century geographical literature... An 8vo edition, with corrections, was issued in six volumes, without an atlas, in 1801, and French translations appeared in 1800, 1801, and 1803, with German, Swedish, and Russian editions being published in 1799, 1800, and 1827 respectively. None, however, can match the elegance and importance of this first printing" (Richard B. Reed for John Howell-Books, Anniversary Catalogue 112). Item #75496
Price: $12,500.00