[Rarebooks] fa: VOYAGE TO AUSTRALIA and ROUND THE WORLD for MAGNETICAL RESEARCH Scoresby 1859

[ArCh]

Listed now, auctions 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

William Scoresby; Archibald Smith (ed.): Journal of a Voyage to Australia and Round the World, for Magnetical Research. London: Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1859. FIRST EDITION; 8vo (23 cm) in early/original dark green pebbled cloth stamped in blind, with spine titles in gilt; xlviii + 315 pp.; with the half-title page, tipped-in errata slip, frontispiece portrait, colored engraved folding map, and numerous in-text illustrations, some colored.

Binding with bumping to the corners, some modest rubbing; damp-stain to the frontispiece, two leaves a little rough at the fore-edges from opening, else clean and sound, firmly bound. Most of the text is unopened (meaning the page-gatherings are still joined at the top edges as issued), hence unread. Front paste-down 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.

The son of an Arctic whaler with whom he'd often sailed in his youth, William Scoresby (1789-1857) was a noted maritime explorer, particularly of northern waters, as well as a scientist and clergyman, a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a friend and frequent correspondent of Sir Joseph Banks. In 1856, commissioned by the Liverpool Compass Committee to investigate the deviation of compasses in wooden and iron ships, Scoresby set sail on the iron-hulled steam clipper Royal Charter on a a six-month voyage to Australia and back. "He was the first person to investigate ships' magnetism in an iron ship as it travelled from the northern to the southern hemisphere and his findings lent powerful support to warnings that attention to compass deviation must be unremitting if the safety of vessels was not to be compromised" (DNB). Never a healthy man, the voyage and subsequent preparations of his journals and observations seem to have broken his health completely and he died in March 1857. His Journal, edited by Archibald Smith, was published posthumously.