[Rarebooks] fa: FOUR VOYAGES TO THE SOUTH SEA, PACIFIC OCEAN, &c. - Benjamin Morrell - 1832

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, April 14. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/y5h3jodx

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Capt. Benjamin Morrell, jun.: A Narrative of Four Voyages, to the South Sea, North and South Pacific Ocean, Chinese Sea, Ethiopic and Southern Atlantic Ocean, Indian and Antarctic Ocean. From the Year 1822 to 1831. Comprising Critical Surveys of Coasts and Islands, with Sailing Directions. And an Account of some New and Valuable Discoveries, including the Massacre Islands, where Thirteen of the Author's Crew were Massacred and Eaten by Cannibals. To which is prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Author's Early Life. New York: Printed and published by J. & J. Harper, 1832. FIRST EDITION; 8vo (22 cm) in original publisher's plum cloth with printed spine label; [8], xxvii, [1], 492, 4 pp; with the half-title, publisher's adverts at the rear, portrait frontispiece. Howes M-818; Hill 1186.

Colorful and controversial account of Morrell's four voyages to (in order): the Antarctic, where he claims to have reached a latitude of 70°14S and discovered a chimerical land mass he called "New South Greenland"; the Pacific, where he witnessed a volcanic eruption in the Galapagos and visited Peru and California, in the latter of which he incited a small war with the locals; the coast of West Africa, surveying it from the Cape of Good Hope to Benguela (Angola) and encountering the slave trade; and the South Seas, visiting the Auckland Islands off New Zealand and the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea, scene of the bloody incident on "Massacre Island" (one of the Carteret Islands) and where Morrell took two islanders prisoner. Returning to New York, Morrell cashed in on his experiences by publishing this account and by staging a successful stage show featuring his native captives, "Two Cannibals of the Islands of the South Pacific." Many critics at the time and subsequently cast doubt on some of Morrell's more outlandish claims, but more recent authorities, while recognizing Morrell's propensity for braggadocio and exaggeration, have argued that much of his work is accurate. Sketchy or not, Morrell's account of his adventures influenced at least two major figures of American literature. Edgar Allan Poe drew on Morrell's Narrative for his novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and Herman Melville, who as a boy of twelve had witnessed Morrell's stage show, is believed by some scholars to have based the character of Queequeg on Dako, one of the native "cannibals" Morrell had brought back from the South Seas.

Binding with sunning to the spine, bumps to the extremities, some splitting to the cloth along the rear joint; old paper repair to the title-page, contents with scattered spotting (though less than is often found in American books of this period), most noticeable on the title and frontispiece; else generally quite clean and sound. With the bookplate of the Adventure and Exploration Collection of Steve Fossett (1944-2007), avid bibliophile, adventurer, record-holding sailor and aviator, and the first person to complete a solo nonstop circumnavigation of the globe in a balloon.