Journal du second voyage du capitaine Cook, sur les vaisseaux La Resolution & L'Aventure.

£2,250 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books · No longer available

Scarce. The French edition of Marras' Journal, possibly translated by Anne Francois Joachim de Fréville. Published anonymously and surreptitiously 18 months before Cook's official narrative Marra provided readers with the first printed account of man's entry into the region south of the Antarctic Circle (Spence). Marra, a native of Cork, was one of the gunner's mates on the Resolution, and was picked up by Cook at Batavia where he had deserted from the Schoonzigt, a Dutch East India Company vessel. He was later to attempt to desert from Resolution when she was at Tahiti, and was clapped in irons for his pains, despite the fact that Cook was remarkably relaxed about the incident, commenting that: 'I know not if he might not have obtained my consent, if he had applied for it in the proper time'. Cook himself identified Marra as the author of this work in a letter to the Admiralty dated 18 September 1775. First French edition. 8vo, xix, 546 pp., large folding map (short split to fold, lightly foxed), contemporary mottled calf gilt, red morocco label, lightly rubbed, a very good copy. Beddie, 1272; Du Rietz, Bibliotheca Polynesia, 812.

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.