WILKES, Charles

Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition....

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Lea & Blanchard, Philadelphia, 1845. Six volumes, quarto, with a portrait, 64 plates and nine maps in the text, and five coloured folding maps in the sixth (Atlas) volume; numerous vignettes in the text; apparently original binding (not described by Haskell) of half maroon morocco, rubbed, some neat repairs to joints; yellow glazed endpapers slightly stained, occasional spots of light browning in the text but an extremely good set. A great rarity of Pacific voyages: the sumptuous first quarto edition for general distribution of the formal narrative of the first American naval exploring expedition.

The United States Exploring Expedition circumnavigated the globe under the command of Wilkes between the summer of 1838 and the summer of 1842. In July 1842, almost immediately upon his return, Wilkes began work on the narrative, drawing on all of the data and logs assembled by the members of the expedition. This took two years, but by August 1844 the first volume was in the press, and the whole set was ready for binding by the end of the year. One hundred copies (the "official" edition) were prepared on the orders of Congress for official presentation; they were followed off the press by the 150 copies of this public edition. The two editions were in exactly the same format, differing only in binding and in small details of the preliminary material.

Of the one hundred and fifty copies printed of this edition, Wilkes retained for presentation twenty five copies, while a further twenty five were used to replace copies of the "official" edition destroyed by fire. The remaining one hundred sets 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...'). It is accordingly very rare today. The original official edition (almost exclusively used for presentation to states and to foreign governments) is virtually never seen on the market as 'virtually all copies are in institutional libraries' (Rosove). In practice this public edition is even rarer: Haskell, who wrote the exhaustive bibliography of the Wilkes expedition, could locate some thirty sets of the official edition in libraries in the United States, but only seven sets of this public edition.

Wilkes retained the copyright of the work, so that he could produce unofficial issues 'to protect my reputation, being unwilling that a garbled edition should be printed by others'. Accordingly, in the same year one thousand copies were published of a general public edition, much smaller in size and with the text completely reset in smaller type, with some textual changes, for more general distribution. While this version also had an atlas, although reduced, it was the last edition to do so.

This unofficial issue differs from the official issue in only a few minor points: here the half-title does not have the third line "By authority of Congress", and the verso of the title-page adds the imprint of "C. Sherman, Printer", with his Philadelphia address. The titles are dated 1845 while the official version, although not issued until 1845, was dated 1844.

Wilkes's six ships ranged from Tierra del Fuego, Chile and Peru, to Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore. Two of its most notable achievements were the extensive survey of the American northwest coast and the exploration of some 1500 miles of the Antarctic coast, 'thereby proving the existence of the seventh continent. Equally important, the Expedition collected and described natural history specimens from all parts of the globe - specimens that eventually came to the fledgling Smithsonian Institution, making it the National Museum of the United States. In a wider sense, the Expedition led to the emergence of the United States as a naval and scientific power with worldwide interests...' (Magnificent Voyagers, p. 9).

Although the Hill Catalogue (1866) appears to describe a copy of this edition the detail noted in the catalogue of the imprint on the verso of the title-page ('Stereotyped by J. Fagan...') identifies their copy as an example of the later, imperial octavo issue or Haskell 2B rather than Haskell 2A.

For substantial recent accounts of the Wilkes expedition, see David B. Tyler, The Wilkes Expedition (Philadelphia, 1968) and Herman J. Viola, ed., Magnificent Voyagers: The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 (Washington, 1985).
Haskell, 2A and 17A; Howes, W414; Rosove, 353.A2; Spence, 1262.

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