Voyage Towards the North Pole First Edition - Constantine John Phipps - Bauman Rare Books

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Voyage Towards the North Pole

Constantine John PHIPPS

Item#: 71066 We're sorry, this item has been sold

Voyage Towards the North Pole

Voyage Towards the North Pole

Voyage Towards the North Pole

“AN IMPORTANT ADDITION TO NAUTICAL SCIENCE”: PHIPPS’ VOYAGE TO THE NORTH POLE, 1774

PHIPPS, Constantine John. Voyage Towards the North Pole Undertaken by His Majesty’s Command 1773. London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols for J. Nourse, 1774. Quarto, contemporary full specked light brown calf sympathetcally rebacked in calf-gilt, red morocco spine labels.

First edition of the official account of Phipps’ polar voyage, with three folding maps, 12 engraved folding plates and numerous charts and tables, 11 of which are folding.

Commodore Phipps, later Lord Mulgrave, led this expedition in June 1773 “for the purpose of discovering a route to India through the North Polar regions. North of Spitzbergen the sea was absolutely blocked with ice and the vessels had to return. Although unsuccessful the voyage was an important addition to nautical science, and the account of it contains a descriptive catalogue of the natural productions of Spitzbergen. The expedition is also of interest from the fact that Lord Nelson, then 14, accompanied it as a midshipman, and distinguished himself by his encounter with a bear” (Maggs II:870). The account includes “the valuable appendix to the work [which] gives geographical and meteorological observations, zoological and botanical records, accounts of the distillation of fresh water from the sea, and astronomical observations” (Hill, 206-07). Sabin 62572. Fitzgerald 560. Delgado, 55. Lowndes, 1860. Bookplate of a Matthew Lewis, Esq., father of the Gothic novelist, Matthew “Monk” Lewis. Bookplate of “Panshanger,” referring to the Earls Cowper. Ink shelf number. Occasional marginal pencil markings.

Maps and plates fine, text generally fine, tiny hole to folding plate at page 182, light expert restoration to contemporary boards. An about-fine copy.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
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