Dernier voyage du capitaine Cook autour du Monde, où se trouvent les circonstances de sa mort.

by Heinrich Zimmermann

€8,000 · Offered by Librairie Clavreuil · No longer available

O Reilly-Reitman, 423 ; Forbes, 47. Cf. Hill, 1935 ; Beaglehole, III, p.CCVI ; Sabin, 106345. Première édition de la traduction française d’une des relations les plus rares du dernier voyage de Cook. Il s agit du premier rapport du troisième voyage de Cook, augmentée d une biographie. Il est d une très grande importance car il renferme de nombreux détails et de nombreuses descriptions donnés par un témoin oculaire, particulièrement de la mort du Capitaine Cook. La biographie donne elle aussi de très intéressants détails sur le caractère du grand navigateur. « Zimmermann, a native of Speyer, was coxswain in the Discovery from the start of the voyage he determined to keep a shorthand journal and to retain it despite the instructions » (Holmes). « The narrative is on the first 117 pages of text, followed by a life of Captain Cook (pp. 118-182). This is adapted from the account appearing in the Göttingisches Magazin in 1780, the latter largely the work of Georg Forster. In this work the accuracy of the information is said to have been confirmed by ‘Mr. Lichtenberg, Celebre professeur à Goettingue, Mr Foster, aussi professeur à Cassel’. The ‘Mr Foster’ is Georg Forster, who is said to have derived general knowledge of the third voyage from Zimmermann and another Berman, Barthold Lohmann, a quartermaster on the Discovery . A second edition of this work, in which the type was reset… is known. Holmes says both editions are of great rarity and are of interest not only on that account

• Binding: Hardcover

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