Dalrymple | An historical collection of the several voyages and discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean, 1770

BOOKS FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE EARLS OF HADDINGTON, LOTS 54-108

DALRYMPLE, ALEXANDER

An historical collection of the several voyages and discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean. London: printed for the author, 1770

FIRST EDITION, 2 volumes bound in one, 4to (265 x 205mm.), half-titles, 4 folding engraved maps, 11 engraved plates, some folding, early nineteenth-century calf, lacking a plate

"An Historical Collection was intended to stir up enthusiasm for the project of discovering and exploring the great southern continent (Terra Australis Incognita)... Although most of the first volume is composed of narratives of Spanish explorers of the South Pacific, Dalrymple also included navigational information on the South Seas and the Solomon Islands, and some of his own observations of the natural curiosities of Sulu... The narrative included, among others, the voyages of Magellan, Ferdinand Grijalva, Juan Fernandes (whom Dalrymple identified as the discoverer of the great southern continent), Adelanto Alvarado Mendana de Neyras, and Pedro Fernandez de Quiroz. Dalrymple did not wish for or anticipate a British conquest of the new continent. His vision of British oceanic expansion was based on trade rather than conquest and colonization... The second volume was devoted to Dutch voyagers [and] includes accounts of the voyages of Le Mair and Schouten in 1616, Abel Janszoon Tasman in 1642, and Jacob Roggewein in 1722" (Speake, Literature of Travel and Exploration, p.306). This regular trade edition was issued in 1770. The different issues of the first volume have different title pages and preliminary material. The dedication in the first issue, dated 1 April 1769, includes a thinly disguised attack on Captain Samuel Wallis, in which Dalrymple used the phrase "who left the arms of a calypso". Andrew Cook describes the third issue as follows: new half-title page, new 1770 title page and dedication of 1 January 1770, without added contents page for volumes I and II together as in the fourth issue.

LITERATURE:

Cook A12; Hill (2004) 410 (calling for 11 plates only, as here)