The Journal of Joseph Banks in the Endeavour, 1768–1771 (Limited Deluxe Edition)

A$1,250 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

A lavish facsimile of the journal Joseph Banks kept on Cook’s first voyage, with commentary by the Banks scholar A. M. Lysaght, in a Zaehnsdorf binding. Joseph Banks (1743–1820) sailed on the Endeavour in 1768 as the voyage’s naturalist, and the journal he kept from 25 August 1768 to 12 July 1771 follows the ship from Brazil to Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia. The manuscript, two quarto volumes, is in the Mitchell Library at the State Library of New South Wales. It came to the library with the Banks papers, which Banks’s collateral descendant Lord Brabourne began selling in the 1880s; the main consignment was acquired in 1884. The standard scholarly text is J. C. Beaglehole’s edition of 1962. This Genesis edition reproduces the journal in facsimile, with a foreword by Prince Philip and a commentary by A. M. Lysaght. Averil Lysaght (1905–1981) was New Zealand-born, and her Banks scholarship was formidable. She spent some twenty years on Joseph Banks in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1766 (1971), and helped with the natural-history notes for Beaglehole’s Endeavour journal. From 1973 she worked with Genesis Publications on facsimile editions of the Banks and Cook journals. The commentary here is the fruit of that work. The foreword carries Prince Philip’s facsimile signature. BANKS, Sir Joseph (foreword H.R.H. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh; commentary A. M. Lysaght). The Journal of Joseph Banks in the Endeavour, 1768–1771. Guildford Adelaide: Genesis Publications in association

• Binding: Hardcover

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