Lot 398
  • 398

Dixon, George

Estimate
5,000 - 8,000 GBP
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Description

  • A Voyage Round the World; but more particularly to the North-West Coast of America. Performed in 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788, in the King George and Queen Charlotte, Captains Portlock and Dixon. London: Geo. Goulding, 1789
  • Paper
FIRST EDITION, 4to (293 x 223mm.), xxx, [ii], 360, 48pp., half-title, 5 engraved maps [one folding, 4 double page], 17 engraved plates [3 double page, 7 natural history plates hand-coloured], contemporary straight-grained red morocco, marbled endpapers, gilt edges, slight offsetting of plates

Large and thick paper copy with the natural history plates coloured of "this excellent authority for the early days of fur trading on the northwest coast" (Streeter). Both Captain Portlock and Dixon were well prepared for this voyage; they were with Captain Cook on his third voyage and had seen the opportunities for fur trading on the north-west coast. They made important maps of the coast and many significant discoveries including Queen Charlotte Island, Port Mulgrave, Norfolk Bay, and Dixon Entrance and Archipelago. The work is primarily an epistolary narrative, being a series of forty-nine letters signed "W.B.", or, William Beresford, super-cargo aboard the Queen Charlotte, but edited and corrected by Dixon on nautical points. Dixon also added the introduction, the appendix, and the maps. In addition to the letters there are important appendices relating to aspects of natural history and ship's logs.

Provenance

Arthur Scott, Rotherfield, armorial bookplate

Literature

Hill (2004) 117; Howes D365; Lada-Mocarski 43; Sabin 20364; Staton & Tremaine 593 (under William Beresford); Streeter VI 3484

Condition

A very good copy
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