Zimmermann, Heinrich:

$10,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

DERNIER VOYAGE DU CAPITAINE COOK AUTOUR DU MONDE, OU SE TROUVENT LES CIRCONSTANCES DE SA MORT.... The second French-language edition, published a year after the first, of Zimmermann's firsthand account of Cook's third voyage. The text has been corrected and reset for this edition. Zimmermann was coxswain on the Discovery during Cook's third voyage, and kept a detailed journal despite strict orders to the contrary. His account first appeared in Germany in 1781, titled Reise Um Die Welt Mit Capitain Cook, but it was suppressed in that country at the behest of the British government (which would spend another three years preparing the official account). A French-language edition was published surreptitiously in Berne, Switzerland in 1782, with this second Berne edition and a second German edition appearing in 1783. Dutch editions appeared in 1784 and 1791, and a Russian version was published at St. Petersburg in 1786.As Rodney Davidson wrote of the early printings of Zimmermann: "all these editions are exceedingly rare. It is hard to predict the realisation price for a copy if one were to come into the open market, as competition between collectors would be very keen." This is one of the scarcest of all the Cook voyage accounts. Zimmermann's narrative was the first description of the third voyage to appear on the continent, and as one of two accounts first published in 1781 (a full three years before the official account), it may well be the first description of the voyage (and,

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