The First English Edition, With All Twenty-One Engraved Plates and a Folding Map
Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the World, During the Years 1803, 1804, 1805, 1806, and 1807...Illustrated by Engravings from Original Drawings.
London: Printed for Henry Colburn, 1813.
Full Description:
LANGSDORFF, Georg Heinrich von. Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the World, During the Years 1803, 1804, 1805, 1806, and 1807...Illustrated by Engravings from Original Drawings. London: Printed for Henry Colburn, 1813 [-1814].
First English edition. Two quarto volumes in one (10 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches; 265 x 210 mm). . xxi, [3], [1]-362, [6, index]; [8], [1]-386, [6, index] pp. Volume II lacking the half-title as is common. With all twenty-one engraved plates (including frontispieces for each volume), two of which are sheets of music. Also with the folding map. The pieces of music are entitled "Brasilian Air" and "Song of the Native of Nukahiwa."
Contemporary full diced calf, rebacked to style. Boards tooled in gilt. Spine stamped and tooled in gilt. Red morocco spine label, lettered in gilt. Board edges tooled in gilt. All edges marbled. Marbled endpapers. Title-pages with some offsetting. Most leaves facing the plates with some offsetting as well. Some minor toning and foxing, but generally very clean. Armorial bookplate on front pastedown. The Same owner's old ink signature on front fly. Previous owner's old ink inscription to top blank margin of title of Part I. Closed tear to blank for-edge margin of lef Ff in Part II, not affecting text. Overall a very good copy.
"Langsdorff was a German physician with a passion for natural history. Together with Mikolai Petrovich Rezanov, chamberlain of Czar Alexander I and Russian ambassador to Japan, Langsdorff accompanied the round-the-world expedition led by Kruzenshtern until it reached Kamchatka in 1805...Comprehensive accounts are given of Brazil, Japan and Hawaii. The first volume, containing the account of the Kruzenshtern expedition with the Nadeshda and Neva until Langsdorff's and Rezanov's separation from it at Kamchatka in 1805, has as half-title "Voyage from Copenhagen to Brazil, the South Sea, Kamschatka, and Japan." (Hill 969-969). Langsdorff left the expedition in Kamchatka with Rezanov in 1805 and sailed for Alaska and Sitka, the site of the first Russian fort, and continued to California, the first Russian settlements at Fort Ross and San Francisco.
"His work contains a fuller account of Sitka, the Settlement of St. Francisco, etc, than any other." (Sabin) Hill 969. Sabin 38896.
HBS 69453.
$9,500.
Price: $9,500.00
Item #69453