A Voyage to the South-Seas, and to Many Other Parts of the World, Performed from the Month of September in the Year 1740, to June 1744, by Commodore Anson, in His Majesty's Ship the Centurion, Having Under His Command the Gloucester, Pearl, Severn, Wager, Trial, and Two Store-Ships. By an Officer of the Fleet. London: Printed and Sold by A. Merryman, MDCCXLIV (1744).
THE EXCEPTIONALLY RARE PIRATED EDITION OF ANSON'S VOYAGES, PRECEDING THE OFFICIAL FIRST EDITION BY FOUR YEARS WITH A VERY INTERESTING INSCRIPTION OF "J. COOK, ENDEAVOUR"
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The bibliographical history of this book is very complicated and not fully known, but it is clear that the first official edition of this work was printed in 1748, but there are at least two pirated imprints printed in 1744 of which this is one. These are the earliest of the pirated editions, another appeared in 1745 and possibly others in the interim years. Merryman's imprint, as here, is the rarest and most desirable. It was originally issued in parts, but is here bound together as a book, contemporaneously. There were many pirated editions because of the huge demand from the public to read an account of Anson's voyage.
This extremely rare pirated edition is recorded to exist, but there are no copies of this Merryman imprint recorded in WorldCat, and so we can not trace any institutionally held copies. However, there is an ESTC reference of this imprint (N55681) implying that the British Library owns a copy, but it is not recorded in WorldCat. This is an exceptionally rare book with a particularly interesting inscription to the first page, see below.
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Provenance:
Ink inscription reading "J. Cook. Endeavour." This inscription does not match the handwriting of Captain James Cook, but it appears to be contemporary with the Endeavour expeditions. There are some possibilities, it could be that someone in the crew of the HMS Endeavour with Captain Cook wrote the inscription in this book, or it is an early forgery - but it would be very early, almost certainly contemporaneous to Captain Cook.
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Size: 110 x 170 mm (approx.)
Condition:
[frontis, t.p., v-viii, pp.9-38, foldout plate, pp.39-232, (2)].
Contemporary full calf with a tooled morocco label between raised bands, half of the label is lacking. Binding rubbed and scuffed with the head of the backstrip peeling, and some loss to leather to the corners. Both boards attached with joints starting and hinges cracked, but the boards certainly seem secure. Shelf and edge wear. Page edges dulled with some marks. No attached bookplates. Edge toning to pastedowns as commensurate with the calf binding. Ink inscription to the head of the frontispiece which reads "J. Cook, Endeavour". Text block fairly clean with light toning and occasional foxing. Tears to the foldout plate, dulled ink inscription to the back (illegible). pp.127-130 partially loose, attached at the foot, and slightly protruding from the page block visible at the fore-edge. Tear across pp.229-232, not with loss of sense to text. Lacking front blank(s) if there were blank(s) there originally, two are bound in at the rear. In the absence of a reliable bibliographical source for a collation, we can't say definitively if it collates as complete, but it certainly seems to textually, and contains both the frontispiece and foldout plate.
[possibly ESTC N55681].
