Fletcher Christian | Letters from Mr. Fletcher Christian, London, 1796, nineteenth-century polished calf gilt

Fletcher Christian

Letters from Mr. Fletcher Christian, containing A Narrative of the Transactions on board His Majesty's Ship Bounty, before and after the Mutiny, with his subsequent Voyages and Travels in South America. London: H.D. Symonds, 1796

FIRST EDITION, 8vo (128 x 118mm.), nineteenth-century polished calf gilt, spine gilt with red morocco label, inner dentelles gilt, red speckled edges, pink endpapers, original silk tie, slight marginal staining to endpapers

A superb copy of the first edition of this rare, albeit fictitious, work. Fletcher Christian lead a mutiny aboard the Bounty, and sailed the ship from Tahiti to Pitcairn Island, where, according to the last survivor of the mutiny, John Adams, he met his death at the hands of the Tahitians. The work contains 7 letters describing Christian's imagined escape from Pitcairn, and his subsequent travels in South America. Despite all the evidence that Christian died at Pitcairn, the myth of his survival was popular: the claim that he managed to escape and returned to England was corroborated by William Wordsworth and Captain Heywood, amongst others, who claimed to have encountered him.

LITERATURE

Ferguson 239 (mistakenly calling for a frontispiece); O'Reilly-Reitman 9318