Wilkes, Charles:

$30,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

NARRATIVE OF THE UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION. DURING THE YEARS 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842. First unofficial edition of the formal narrative of the first American naval exploring expedition: one of only 150 copies printed (only 100 of which were for sale) of this issue of this edition, and rare. Altogether 250 copies of the formal narrative were printed, 100 of them ordered by Congress for official presentation and 150 copies (of which this set is one) that Wilkes had printed "for the purpose of presentation to my friends and for sale to those who should desire a book of that size." Ultimately, Wilkes retained for presentation twenty-five copies; a further twenty-five were used to replace copies of the "official" issue destroyed by fire; the remainder were available for sale. Haskell, the bibliographer of the Wilkes expedition, notes an advertisement for copies of this issue that appeared in one of the subsequent editions, noting that "the Publishers have for sale for Sixty Dollars, in cloth, a few copies of the edition in large Quarto, printed for distribution by Order of Congress. Only one hundred and twenty-five of the two hundred and fifty copies printed have been offered to the public."Accordingly, it is very rare today, while the original official issue (almost exclusively used for presentation to states and to foreign governments) is virtually never seen on the market: "virtually all copies are in institutional libraries" (Rosove). This unofficial issue differs

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