THE SOUTHERN CROSS EXPEDITION: FIRST EDITION, SECOND ISSUE

5. BORCHGREVINK, Carstens Egeberg.

First on the Antarctic Continent…

Octavo, with photogravure portrait frontispiece, three coloured maps (folding), 18 plates and numerous photographic illustrations; an excellent copy in the original red cloth variant binding. London, George Newnes, 1901.

The second issue of the first edition, issued in the same year, and identified by its red cloth binding. This was the leader and organiser’s account of the Antarctic cruise of the Southern Cross, the first expedition to winter on the Antarctic continent. The Norwegian-born Borchgrevink migrated to Australia aged 24 years. He was a member of Henrik Bull’s Norwegian expedition on the Antarctic, which completed the first confirmed landing on the Antarctic continental mainland in 1895. On his return, Borchgrevink began planning for an expedition to reach both the Magnetic and South Poles. He travelled to England to raise sponsorship and eventually convinced the publisher Sir George Newnes to back the project, with his purchase and refit of the Southern Cross. Consequently, Borchgrevink and a party of nine other men and 75 sledge dogs were the first to make winter camp on the Antarctic mainland. The inhospitable conditions prevented the expedition achieving their goals, however they did successfully complete the first sledging journey across the Ross Ice Shelf and reached a new furthest south, exceeding Ross’s earlier benchmark set in 1840. By proving that a party could winter safely on the ice, they laid the groundwork for the Antarctic expeditions which followed.

The Southern Cross expedition could claim a number of “firsts” in Antarctic exploration, including having been the first to establish a base to winter over on the continent. Louis Bernacchi and Will Colbeck were amongst the expedition members, one of whom, Nikolai Hanson, died, and was the first person to be buried on Antarctica. Rosove calls it “one of the most important in the Antarctic bibliography”.

Renard, 153; Rosove 45.A1.b ‘Considerably scarcer than [the first issue]’.

$1650 [5000550 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at

DRURY’S SET, BOUND FOR HIM BY LEWIS IN ENGLISH RED MOROCCO

6. CICERO, Marcus Tullius.

Various works contained in eight volumes…

Eight separately published works, octavo, bound as a most handsome set in English red morocco, spines gilt in compartments and lettered with name of the work, the editor’s name and the place and date of publication, the bindings by Charles Lewis. Cambridge and Oxford, various publishers, 1718-1727.

A fine set of works by Cicero, assembled by the collector Henry Drury, uniformly bound for him, each work collated by him with his typically neat note, in slightly differing words in each volume, “Charta maxima [i.e. Large Paper]”, dated at Harrow in 1819. In one volume Drury notes that they were acquired “from Mr Williams’s collection, at Hendon”. In each volume he identifies its binding as being by Lewis, that is the famous English binder Charles Lewis, who worked from 1807.

Henry Joseph Thomas Drury (1778-1841) ws a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge from 1799 to 1808, thereafter Under Master and then Master of the Lower School at his alma mater Harrow. He had a great reputation as a classical scholar, was an original member of the Roxburghe Club, and memorialised as Menalcus in Dibdin’s Bibliographical Decameron. His formidable library of Greek and Latin classics was dispersed in 4729 lots over 23 days in February and March 1827.

At Drury’s sale in 1827 they were bought by an unknown collector whose note tipped into one volume reads “H. Drury’s Sale 23 February 1827. Cicero 8 vo. Ch. Mxma. L11.6.0. Nos. 861, 871, 72, 73, 74, 75. Bound by Cha. Lewis”.

The sale catalogue entries for those lots are as follows:

861 Ciceronis Omnes, qui ad artem Oratorium pertinent, Libri, ed. J. Proust, 3 vols, Oxford, 1718

871 Ciceronis Tusculanae Disputationes Libri V, ed. Davis, Cambridge, 1723

872 Cicero de Divinatione et de Fato, ed. Davis, Cambridge, 1721

873 Ciceronis Academica, ed. Davis, Cambridge, 1725

874 Cicero de Nature Deorum, ed. Davis & Walker, Cambridge, 1718

875 Cicero de Legibus, ed. Davis, Cambridge 1727

The first, three-volume, work was edited by J. Proust, while the others were all edited by Davis.

A catalogue of the extensive and valuable library of the Rev. Henry Drury… Which will be sold by auction, by Mr. Evans… on… February 19. And eleven following days; and… March 12, and ten following days (Sundays excepted). 1827, lots 861 and 871-75.

Provenance: Henry Drury, with his notes in each volume.

$2750 [5000811 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at

AN EXTRAORDINARY COOK LETTER, ENTIRELY IN HIS HAND

7. COOK, James.

Autograph letter signed.

Autograph manuscript in ink on paper, on one side of a single sheet, small folio, amounting to about 12 lines, with a fine signature by Cook; docket-title on verso in a different hand. HMS Resolution at Deptford, 9 March 1772.

Extremely rare: a full letter, written entirely by Cook and signed boldly by him. The letter was written aboard HMS Resolution while the ship was at Deptford, taking on final stores and provisions prior to sailing on Cook’s arduous second voyage.

In the letter, dated 9 March 1772 and addressed to an official of the English East India Company, Cook asks for the release of one of his men who has been press-ganged into the company’s service. Such a letter, written without the assistance of one of Cook’s indefatigable clerks, is particularly rare and attractive, especially as the main corpus of material regarding his preparations for the second voyage takes the form of official correspondence, frequently terse, dealing with more conventional subjects.

The letter reads, in full:

Having received a letter from James Keaton belonging to His Majesty’s Sloop Resolution under my command, acquainting me with his being inticed on board the Devonshire belonging to the Hon. East India Company, and there detain’d to serve as a soldier, I beg you will order him to be discharged or delivered up to such persons as I shall send for that purpose. I am

Your Most Humble Servant

James Cook

To Mr. Coggin

The activities of press-gangs at this period are well known and were a considerable hazard to a captain preparing to embark. This was especially true in 1772 for Cook, who was enduring lengthy enforced delays in his preparations for the second voyage. Indeed, a great many sailors were known to have “run” from the Resolution in the long months while the two vessels were going through their refit, with an incredible fifty-eight recorded as having thus absconded, and another thirty-nine discharged for various reasons (see John Robson’s online database).

The depth of research that has been done regarding Cook’s musters makes this manuscript document of especial interest, as James Keaton is not otherwise known to Cook historians (the similarly named “John Heaton” is recorded as running at the Nore on 14 May 1772, but Cook’s hand is clear and the dates irreconcilable). It is also interesting that Keaton, in Cook’s words, has been taken ‘as a soldier’, as his detachment of marines did not come aboard until 29 April 1772. Despite the bustle of Deptford, it would seem that Cook was well informed about the fate of Keaton, as the 499-ton East Indiaman Devonshire, captain Robert Morgan, was very likely in port; she later sailed from Portsmouth on 12 April 1772 (see Charles Hardy, A Register of Ships, Employed in the Service of the Honourable the United East India Company, p. 55).

The letter is addressed to “Mr Coggin”, undoubtedly a homophone for “Coggan”, and almost certainly Charles Thomas Coggan, one of the directors of the East India Company and Comptroller of Shipping. Coggan went on to a long and illustrious career in the company, and by 1811 was the company’s paymaster.

The letter is not recorded in Beaglehole’s calendar of documents for the second voyage, although he does note three other letters apparently of the same day, two to the Victualling Board and a third to Banks, at a time when the naturalist was still intending to sail. Moreover, while Beaglehole lists no fewer than ninety-two letters from Cook before he sailed on 13 July 1772, almost all of this material is quite boilerplate in form, mostly addressed to the Admiralty, or to official bodies such as the Victualling or the Navy boards. Other than the present, urgent example the only letters not taking on a formal cast are one to Cook’s friend Captain William Hammond, two to Joseph Banks, and a few to Cook’s fellow officers on the Resolution or Adventure. Unlike most of the letters from this period, and presumably because Cook wrote it himself in haste, the text of this letter was never copied into the ship’s record (as would normally have been done by his clerk) and thus does not appear in the Canberra Letter Book (1771-1778).

This wonderful manuscript originally appeared for sale in the London dealer Francis Edwards’ catalogue 904 (1967, item 96, priced £330: in the same catalogue a copy of Magra’s surreptitious account of the first voyage was priced £95). The export licence attached to the letter shows that it was sold to R.C. Bedell of Columbia, Missouri.

Beaglehole, II, pp. 896-965 (Calendar of Documents), and passim.

Provenance: With Messrs Francis Edwards in 1967 (their catalogue 904, item 96); sold to R.C. Bedell (private collector of Columbia, Missouri); acquired by Robert Parks (private collector of Detroit, Michigan); with Hordern House (catalogue “Captain James Cook, the Greatest Discoverer. The Robert and Mary Anne Parks Collection”, 2008, item 34); private collection (Australia).

$425,000 [5000783 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at

CHILDREN’S ATLAS

8. [COSTUME] SAINTIN (publisher).

Nouvel Atlas des Enfans et des Commerçans…

Octavo, two hand-coloured plates and seven hand-coloured maps (four double-page, three folding), a handsome copy. Paris, Chez Saintin, 1811.

A charming children’s atlas, with delightful depictions of Tahiti, New Zealand and Hawaii. Although much reprinted and very popular, this work is now rare in any edition. Two exquisite plates, each with twelve small vignettes, detail the peoples of the world. The first three main panels show images of European, Asian, and African scenes, while the fourth has ‘American’ images; there are not only charming images of Iroquois, Californians, and Peruvians, but surprisingly the three final scenes show New Zealanders, Tahitians and inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands (here accidentally called “Americans”, almost a century before their formal annexation). Each of the vignettes is also vouchsafed a very brief note, with some unusual commentary: we learn that the New Zealanders love their children, that the lower-caste Hawaiians prostrate themselves on the ground before royalty, and that the only quadrupeds in Tahiti are dogs, cats, and rats.

The series of maps is equally interesting, with good depictions of France, Europe, Africa and the Americas. There is also a large double-hemisphere map of the globe by Blondeau: New Holland is shown still attached to Van Diemens Land, and the Pacific Islands are represented in some detail, showing the Society Islands, the Marquesas, and the Friendly Isles. The Sandwich Islands are also clearly marked, with the familiar caption that ‘here Captain Cook was killed’.

Saintin was a publisher of popular editions of authors such as Moliere and Homer, and issued several such works of geographical instruction.

Gumuchian, 5087 (1810 edition); not in Forbes.

$2850 [3702899 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at

Learning To Paint In Watercolour

9. COX, David.

A Series of Progressive Lessons intended to Elucidate the Art of Painting…

Oblong quarto; illustrated throughout with full-page hand-coloured lithographs; in later quarter maroon calf over original marbled boards. London, T. Clay, 1828.

Artistic tuition by a notable English painter whose reputation has grown in recent years. An exhibition of Cox’s work at the Yale Center for British Art, with a substantial accompanying reference work, has drawn further attention to a painter who, although somewhat out of fashion in recent decades, has often been compared with Turner, Constable and Burne-Jones.

Cox’s work includes studies on perspective, sketching, shading and marine art. The illustrations are prepared in lithography and coloured by hand, and some of the larger plates are folding. The ability to draw topography was seen as an important skill for naval and military officers, having obviously important practical applications and often being taught to cadets from a young age. Although this manual is rather advanced for military purposes, it would have been of particular interest to the often military men who drifted into landscape painting and found a ready audience for publication of their illustrations of exotic travels.

‘Cox’s work was praised by Thackeray in Sketches after English Landscape Painters (1850) and Ruskin wrote in 1857 that “there is not any other landscape which comes near these works of David Cox in simplicity or seriousness”. Although Cox’s standing in the art world reached its apex in the late 19th century, recent reappraisals of Victorian art have seen Cox rightly restored to his position as one of the finest of all British landscape painters…’ (National Library of Scotland).

$2100 [3806703 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at

HOW TO GROW BOTANY BAY PLANTS: THE FIRST GUIDE

10. CUSHING, John.

The Exotic Gardener…

Octavo; a good copy in contemporary calf, neatly rebacked. London, Printed by A. Macpherson, 1812. First London edition, and a work of great interest to Australian horticulture: this is the first book to include instructions on growing Australian plants, here usually referred to as ‘Botany Bay plants’.

‘It includes Australian plants among its exotics and is the first gardening guide for growing such plants. Many members of the First Fleet sent back seeds to their friends in England… and for many years settlers did likewise. Daniel Bunce in Hobart Town advertised seeds of native plants for sending to friends in Britain. The Exotic Gardener, therefore, represents the first recommended use of Australian native plants for the garden or more likely the greenhouse or conservatory’ (Victor Crittenden, A History and Bibliography of Australian Gardening Books, pp. 11-12).

The work is full of practical advice on the generally hard-wooded plants of Australia, with particular notice of the varieties of Banksias. Cushing recommends a loamy, sandy soil for the Botany Bay plants, and notes that any seeds received from New South Wales, as with those of the South Sea Islands generally, will require the aid of a hot-bed when first sown.

Crittenden, ‘A History and Bibliography of Australian Gardening Books’, 2 (1814 edition).

Provenance: William Case (early signature at head of title).

$3800 [5000778 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at

BUCCANEER NARRATIVES: FIRST ENGLISH LANDING ON THE MAINLAND

11. DAMPIER, William.

A set of Dampier’s voyages, complete to 1703 with the publication of the “Voyage to New Holland”. Three volumes, octavo, with altogether 14 engraved maps and 10 plates and tables ( the first volume with 5 maps (4 folding); 2nd volume with 4 (folding) maps; 3rd volume with a folding map and14 plates.); contemporary panelled calf, the spines panelled in gilt in six compartments between five raised bands, red leather labels. London, James Knapton, 1699, 1700, 1703.

1. “A New Voyage round the World…”. Fourth edition, 1699, corrected from the first edition of 1697. The first account of the first English landing in Australia.

2. “Voyages and Descriptions Vol. II… A supplement to the Voyage round the World…”. Second edition, 1700.

The continuation of Dampier’s New Voyage, described as Volume II on the title-page but quite separately published.

3. “A Voyage to New Holland, &c. in the year, 1699…”. First edition. The important and rare first edition of the first deliberate English voyage to Australia, one of very few classic pre-Cook voyages to the continent.

A very attractive set of Dampier’s voyages, in contemporary bindings and with excellent provenance, complete to the publication of the “Voyage to New Holland” (but before publication of the separately-published continuation of 1709). Most sets of Dampier’s voyages are examples of the much later compilation edition of 1729 and sets composed of the original printings are desirable.

These classic voyage narratives by England’s most famous buccaneer represent a major body of early Pacific description, including the first landing by an Englishman in Australia, and the first deliberate English voyage to Australia, one of very few classic pre-Cook voyages to the continent.

Widely regarded as the greatest English explorer and navigator before Cook, Dampier was also a popular and exciting writer. His books went through many editions - indeed he is still in print in one

HORDERN HOUSE hordern.com form or another - and copies of the early editions of his voyages have always been difficult to find. In 1729 his publishers made an effort to continue sales by establishing a uniform version, but even in the early nineteenth century the books were rare: Burney noted in his collection of Voyages (vol. IV, p. 486) that “Many editions of Dampier’s Voyages have been printed, and they have been so fairly worn out that at this time it is difficult to procure a complete set…”.

Provenance: With the armorial bookplate in the first and second volumes of William Cowper, 1st Earl Cowper, (1665-1723), English politician and the first Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain following the Union with Scotland; the third volume has the small bookticket of Judith Cowper (over traces of the armorial bookplate of the other two volumes). Judith Cowper was probably the Cowper relative and poet (1702-1781), protégé of Alexander Pope, who became Judith Cowper Madan on her marriage in 1723.

$17,850 [5000817 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at

Pickwick In The Original Parts

12. DICKENS, Charles.

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.

Twenty numbers as published, in the original nineteen monthly wrappered octavo parts; forty-three inserted engraved plates, including frontispiece and vignette title-page; original green printed wrappers designed by Seymour; in a custom-made quarter morocco case. London, Chapman and Hall, 1836-1837.

A most attractive set of Pickwick in original parts, well-preserved by a series of owners, and in unsophisticated condition.

Collation of a Pickwick in parts is famously laborious. There are often multiple varying states or issues of individual components, whether text, engravings, wrappers, or advertisements. Changes were made to engravings as they were reprinted, sometimes because the plates wore out, errors in the text were corrected, and changes to the wrappers were frequent to revise the advertisements that they included.

Suffice to say of this set that, as with most, it is made up from different states. What is important is its impeccable original condition, as sold by the Belfast bookseller Hodgson, probably to H.W. Calmount who has boldly signed each part (presumably a Dublin reader, since there is a Calmount Park in Dublin).

The exhaustive description by Hatton and Cleaver is recognised as the standard bibliographical analysis: a full collation has been prepared of the present set. In summary: Parts I-XIII are in the later or reprinted wrappers with the others in the primary wrappers. The plates are mostly in their later states (where priority is distinguished) until the tenth part, after which they are a mixture of first and second states. Most texts are in their corrected later state. Four of the seven inserted “address leaves” by the author and publisher are present. (Also present are Calmount’s copies of “Illustrations to the Pickwick Club… by Samuel Weller” (E. Gratten, 1837) parts I & II, in the original green wrappers).

Nowadays, as it should be, as much attention is paid to the coherence of a set and to be able to show, as with this one, that there has been no sophistication attempted. The set is as issued, as purchased serially by its first owner, and in original condition.

Hatton & Cleaver, 3; Eckel, p.17ff.

Provenance: Hodgson, Belfast bookseller (small label on most front wrappers); each front wrapper inscribed at head “H.W. Calmount”; Arnold Greenhill (pictorial bookplate); H. Bradley Martin (emblematic bookplate, sale Sotheby’s New York, 30 April 1990, lot 2766, $6,000); private collection (Australia).

$16,500 [5000624 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at