[Rarebooks] fa: BURNEY'S CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY of VOYAGES in the PACIFIC 1816-17 - Including BUCCANEERS OF AMERICA (2 vols. w/ Maps & Plates)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other titles relating to Piracy & Naval History, auction ending Sunday, January 20. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/boyw7qe

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.



James Burney: A Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean. Volume IV, To the Year 1723, including a History of the Buccaneers of America. [AND] Volume V, To the Year 1764. London: Printed by Luke Hansard & Son, and Sold by G. & W. Nicol [etc.], 1816, 1817. FIRST EDITIONS. Two volumes, 4to (27.5 cm), bound in recent blue buckram; xviii, 580 pp.; vii, [1], 337, [1] pp.; complete with 7 engraved plates and maps (5 folding) and 2 in-text woodcuts.

The final two volumes of Burney's classic survey of Pacific voyages, published 1803-1817, widely considered the most important general history of early South Sea discoveries. These volumes complete with all the maps and illustrations called for, including folding maps of: the Caribbean Sea and West Indies; the Isthmus of Darien and Bay of Panama; William Dampier's Chart of Nova Guinea and Nova Britannia; the Carolinas  Islands or New Philippines; and a two-page View of the Ruins on the Island Tinian. Deaccessioned from the University of California, Berkeley, with 19th-century library stamps to the title-pages and two or three text leaves, and to the margin of one plate (no library marks to the other plates, endpapers or bindings); scattered light spotting/foxing to the leaves and a few of the plates, some offsetting; otherwise the contents are quite clean and fresh, firmly bound. Title-page of vol. V with the penciled signature and notation of "Alexr. S. Taylor 1856", presumably Alexander Smith Taylor (1817-1876), prodigious and eccentric historian, ethnographer and collector, considered the "first bibliographer of California" (Quarterly of the California Historical Society).

More than half of vol. IV consists of Burney's History of the Buccaneers of America which proved so popular it was subsequently issued as a separate book. Also included in these volumes are accounts of the Company of Scotland and the Colony at Darien; the voyages of Edmund Halley, William Dampier, Woodes Rogers, George Shelvocke (the inspiration for Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which Burney quotes here at length), George Anson, Bougainville, etc., etc. Captain, later Admiral, James Burney (1750-1812), the son of musicologist Charles Burney and brother of novelist Fanny Burney, "entered the navy in 1764, and having served on the coast of North America and in the Mediterranean, sailed with Captain Cook in his second voyage, 1772-4, during which time he was promoted to lieutenant. In 1775 he was in the Cerberus on the North American station, and was recalled to sail again under Cook in his third voyage. Consequent on the deaths of Cook and Clerke, he came home in command of the Discovery,  and was confirmed as commander on 2 Oct. 1780. In 1803 he began the publication of A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, which extended to 5 vols. and was not completed until 1817; it is well known as the standard work on the subject" (DNB).