[Rarebooks] fa: FORSTER - HISTOIRE DES DECOUVERTES et des VOYAGES FAITS dans LE NORD - 1788

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, March 17. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/mnokg2h

Thanks for looking,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

Johann Reinhold Forster: Histoire des découvertes et des voyages faits dans le Nord. Mis en Français par M. Broussonet. Avec trois Cartes Géographiques. Paris: chez Cuchet, 1788. First edition thus. Two volumes, 8vo (21 cm), untrimmed in original publisher's blue wrappers with manuscript spine labels; xiii, [1], 399, [1] pp.; xii, 410, [2] pp; with the half-titles and 3 engraved folding maps (complete). Howes F269; Sabin 25137.

The first French edition of this invaluable survey of expeditions in northern climes and voyages in search of the Northwest and Northeast Passages from ancient times to the 1770s. Of particular interest is Forster's account of Captain Cook's voyage of 1776, as there was no love lost between the author and the explorer. Forster had served as senior naturalist on Cook's second voyage (1772-75), but his notoriously irritable temper had resulted in his being banned from contributing to any of the official accounts of the expedition. Many other voyages are described, including those of Cabot, Frobisher, Henry Hudson, Juan de Fuca, Nicolo Zeno, the Phoenicians, Arabs, Romans, Greeks, etc. Complete with all three folding maps: the polar region, northern Asia, and Europe at the time of Alfred the Great.

Wraps splitting at the joints with some tape repairs; some browning to the maps, mostly in the margins, and two small stains to one map; cockling and intermittent browning to the text; otherwise quite clean and sound, with wide untrimmed margins, in the original wraps as issued by the publisher.