[Rarebooks] fa: NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY ROUND THE WORLD - Sir George Simpson - 2 vols. 1847

[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 again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Sir George Simpson: Narrative of a Journey Round the World, during the Years 1841 and 1842. London: Henry Colburn, 1847. FIRST EDITION. Two volumes, 8vo (24 cm), in original publisher's plum-colored cloth decorated in blind and lettered in gilt; xi, [1], 438, 24 pp.; vii, [1], 469, [1] pp.; with the publisher's catalog at the rear of vol. I, portrait frontispiece, engraved folding map with hand-colored route.

George Simpson (1792-1860), Governor-in-Chief of the Hudson's Bay Company's Territories in North America, traveled widely in the vast dominion under his stewardship. It is said that, with the exception of voyageurs and their Siberian equivalents, few men spent as much time exploring the northern wilderness. In March 1841 he set off on what was to be the first overland "circumnavigation" of the world. "By way of Halifax and Boston he proceeded to Canada, crossed the Dominion by canoe, and then, after a call at the Sandwich Islands, went across to Siberia and traversed it from east to west, and so through Russia back to England, which he reached after an absence of nineteen months and twenty-six days" (DNB). On the first leg of his journey, Simpson also visited Alaska, Oregon, and California, traveling down the coast to San Francisco, Monterey, and Santa Barbara.

Bindings with sunning to the spines and edges, modest bumping to the extremities, spines slightly rolled; closed tear to margin of the folding map, some spotting to the frontispiece and endpapers, a very few occasional light spots elsewhere, otherwise clean and sound, firmly bound. Engraved armorial bookplates of William Garnett, Esq., of Bleasdale and Quernmore Park, Lancaster; later bookplates 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.