Voyage de découvertes aux Terres Australes
Unique copy of this important first edition.
A superb copy.
2 volumes 4to: I/(2) ff., XV and 496 pp., (1) f., II/XXXI and 471 pp., 1 portrait and 2 folding plates outside the text. (341 x 252 mm).
Folio of (1) f., IV pp. and 40 engraved plates. (517 x 337 mm).
Total 3 volumes, full long-grain red morocco, wide gilt dentelle framing the covers, imperial eagle wreathed with a laurel crown in the center, smooth spine with gilt decoration, blue silk doublures and endpapers, inner dentelle, gilt edges, some foxing. Period binding decorated with the imperial eagle.
Péron, François and Louis-Henri de Saulces, Baron de Freycinet. Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands carried out by order of His Majesty the Emperor and King… of the Philomatic and Medical Societies of the same city. Péron. Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands… Atlas by Messrs. Lesueur and Petit.
Paris, from the Imperial Press, 1807. Royal Printing House, 1816.
Unique copy of this celebrated original edition sumptuously bound in contemporary morocco adorned with the imperial emblem: a gilt-embossed eagle at the center of each cover surrounded by the laurel crown.
Nissen, ZB, 3120; Sabin, 60 998.
Printed on very large vellum paper (height of text volumes 340 mm; Atlas 517 mm), state unknown to all bibliographers: Brunet, Sabin, Chadenat, Nissen etc.
This unique imperial copy is 50 mm taller than the remarkable royal copy bearing the arms of the Duke of Angoulême.
The quality of the paper is of a luxury unprecedented in the history of printed books.
This original edition recounts the expedition marking the height of the great voyages of the 18th century, giving the first detailed map of all Australia.
“Péron's voyage is one of the most interesting ever made to the Southern Lands. From a standpoint of geographical discovery and natural history, this work is as important as that of Flinders” (Chadenat, 148).
“An interesting work, with perfectly executed plates. The section of the account containing navigation and geography was published by L. de Freycinet.” (Brunet, IV. 603)
Copy matches the collation given by Nissen (no. 3120), complete with the two text volumes and the first Atlas with title and plates numbered 2 to 41; without the second part of the Atlas written by Freycinet in 1811, adorned with 14 maps. But was it ever printed for this unique imperial copy on very large vellum paper!
The expedition lasted over three years, from 19 October 1800 to 25 March 1804. The aim was the coasts of New Holland, then almost unknown. Twenty-two of the most brilliant scholars of the period participated and nearly 2,500 new species collected enriched the museum’s collections.
From 1800, the First Consul ordered the preparation of a scientific reconnaissance expedition to the southern lands, particularly the south coast of Australia, which the scholars entrusted with the mission under the order of Captain Nicolas Baudin called “Terre Napoléon”.
In addition to the many scientific advances brought by this expedition, a rich harvest of more than two thousand five hundred new species was added to the Museum’s collections.
Freycinet, commander of the Casuarina, drafted the astronomical, nautical, and geographical works of the voyage, published in Paris in 1815, in a quarto volume and a folio atlas with 32 maps, not included with this unique copy.
Attached are the details of this important voyage:
Magnificent and unique copy, printed on immense luxury-margined vellum paper, state unknown among all bibliographers, contemporarily bound in sumptuous red morocco adorned with the imperial emblem, an exceptional bibliophilic and historical artifact under the new reign of Louis XVIII.
