A RARE DAMPIER ABRIDGEMENT
The voyages and discoveries of captain william dampier in the south seas and round the world. Wherein he gives a particular account of all the different places he discovered; the Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants, and all the natural curiosities he met with in those places. In two volumes.
London.
[s.n.], Printed in the Year 1790
12mo in 4s.
176; [2], 117pp, [1]. Contemporary gilt-tooled tan half-calf, marbled boards. Tear to N1, Vol I, without loss.
A late eighteenth-century abridgement of the voyages of Captain William Dampier (1651-1715), including his first circumnavigation, engagements with the buccaneers Bartholomew Sharp and Edmund Cooke - which included a land crossing of the Isthmus of Darien - and the raiding parties led by John Cooke and Edward Davies, and his own command of HMS Roebuck, which took him to the 'Shark Bay' off the Western Australian mainland by the summer of 1699, where he produced the first detailed records of the flora and fauna of that area.
Whist the details of this abridged version are clearly extracted from his own more comprehensive accounts, first published in four volumes between 1692 and 1709, the text itself is a poorly rewritten version of the 1776 abridgement (ESTC T113018), which made efforts to put Dampier's various voyages in chronological order. Given the lack of a publisher's imprint on this 1790 edition, this cataloguer suggests it was likely itself - rather fittingly - a piracy.
Rare; ESTC locates just two copies worldwide (BL and John Carter Brown); there is also a copy at the NLA.
Whist the details of this abridged version are clearly extracted from his own more comprehensive accounts, first published in four volumes between 1692 and 1709, the text itself is a poorly rewritten version of the 1776 abridgement (ESTC T113018), which made efforts to put Dampier's various voyages in chronological order. Given the lack of a publisher's imprint on this 1790 edition, this cataloguer suggests it was likely itself - rather fittingly - a piracy.
Rare; ESTC locates just two copies worldwide (BL and John Carter Brown); there is also a copy at the NLA.
ESTC N65310.
£ 750.00
Antiquates Ref: 34826
