[Rarebooks] fa: GEORGE ANSON - VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD - 1748

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auctions ending Sunday, January 27. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/adtanff

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

George Anson: A Voyage Round the World, in the Years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV. by George Anson, Esq; Commander in Chief of a Squadron of His Majesty’s Ships, sent upon an Expedition to the South-Seas. Compiled from Papers and other Materials of the Right Honourable George Lord Anson, and published under his Direction. By Richard Walter, M. A. Chaplain of his Majesty’s Ship the Centurion, in that Expedition. The Fourth Edition. With Charts of the Southern Part of South America, of Part of the Pacific Ocean, and of the Track of the Centurion round the World. London: Printed for John and Paul Knapton, in Ludgate-Street, MDCCXLVIII [1748]. Thick 8vo (20 cm) in period calf, rebacked in recent calf with gilt-lettered spine label; [24] + 548 pp.; three folding engraved maps. ESTC T59233.

Complete with all three folding maps, including one depicting California as an island. The largest map (South America) with a long horizontal tear at the fold professionally repaired on the verso, and some other shorter splits at the folds; two or three short marginal tears to the  other maps; some offsetting and browning to the edges; mild darkening to the top edge of the text block, a few scattered small spots and stains; otherwise contents are clean and sound, firmly bound. Front paste-down with small bookseller's ticket, the eighteenth-century engraved armorial bookplate of Reg[inald?] Cocks and the early ink signature of Thomas Yarde; early ink notation to front free-endpaper.

A solid, handsome copy of this vivid account of one of the most harrowing and dramatic voyages in the history of seafaring. Despite storms, shipwreck, scurvy and other mishaps reducing his squadron of five vessels to the single ship Centurion, Anson succeeding in circumnavigating the globe — and capturing the prize of all treasure ships, Nuestra Señora de Covadonga, to boot. Among the greatest and most popular of eighteenth-century travel narratives, Thomas Carlyle described Anson's Voyage as "a real poem in its kind, or romance all fact; one of the pleasantest little books in the world's library at this time."