PARKINSON, Sydney

A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, in His Majesty's Ship, the Endeavour...

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S. Parkinson, London, 1773. Quarto, with frontispiece portrait, a map and 26 plates; a large copy with very generous margins; some offsetting throughout (as is often the case) but in generally excellent condition in a handsome modern binding of half morocco and marbled boards. First edition: the most handsome of the unofficial accounts of Cook's first voyage. Engaged by Banks as botanical artist on the Endeavour, Parkinson produced an enormous number of magnificent botanical and natural history drawings of Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia. At the end of the voyage, en route from Batavia to the Cape of Good Hope, he died of a fever.

His manuscripts and drawings became a matter of dispute: Banks considered that they were his, while Parkinson's brother Stanfield claimed them under the provisions of his brother's will. When Hawkesworth learned of the impending publication of this work, he got an injunction to delay its appearance until some time after his official account, and retaliated by deliberately omitting Parkinson's name from the narrative: even the botanical illustrations in the official account have no credit to the artist.

Parkinson himself was responsible for the original drawings for twenty-three of the twenty-seven plates here. His original artwork and these engravings made from it are one of the chief visual sources for Cook's first voyage, and one of the first views European observers had of such South Pacific scenes. Parkinson's journal also has some of the earliest natural history observations on the region, and contains the first published use of the word kangaroo (as "kangooroo", p. 149).
Beaglehole, I, pp. ccliii-cclv; Beddie, 712; Davidson, 'A Book Collector's Notes', pp. 54-56; Hill, 1308; Holmes, 7; Kroepelien, 944; O'Reilly-Reitman, 371.

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• ordernr.: 701_795

• bookseller: Hordern House (AUSTRALIA)