PERON, Francois & Louis FREYCINET

Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes...

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Imprimerie Impériale [Royale], 1807-11- Paris, 1816. Four volumes, small and large quarto; the two-volume text with portrait frontispiece and two folding tables; with 40 plates (numbers 2 to 41, the first never having been issued; 23 of them coloured and two folding) in the first atlas and 14 maps (two double-page and folding) in the second; the atlas volumes uncut in contemporary French glazed buff boards, the first atlas a portfolio holding the plates unbound (with just one plate showing signs of once having been stitched); the text volumes, uncut and with very large margins, in later French bindings to match, maroon leather labels; a very handsome set. First edition: the important official account of the Baudin voyage to the Pacific, sent out by the French government in 1800 with orders to complete the cartographic survey of the Australian coast.

Commanded by Nicolas Baudin, the expedition left France in 1800 and sailed via Mauritius to the Australian coast in the region of Cape Leeuwin, arriving in May 1801. Péron sailed as naturalist on the expedition and Freycinet as cartographer. The vessels Géographe and Naturaliste sailed north from Cape Leeuwin. The expedition surveyed the coast and made observations on the natural history and inhabitants, until they crossed to Timor. After three months the two ships set out for Tasmania, the party continuing to make detailed surveys, and went on to Sydney. They then undertook a complete survey of the southern coast and an examination of the northern coast before returning to Mauritius where, near the end of 1803, Baudin died.

This was a celebrated voyage, which brought back to France the most important collection of natural history specimens in the history of the French Museum, as well as a wealth of geographical and other information. Living specimens of flora and fauna, chiefly Australian, were taken to the Jardin des Plantes, but also to Malmaison, the chateau bought by the empress Josephine for herself and Napoleon, where the plants were brought on in hothouses or in some cases planted directly into the garden. The vignette on one of the title-pages here contains the famous and beautiful view of Malmaison with eucalyptus, casuarina, and acacia trees growing in the park and kangaroos, emus and black swans wandering freely.

The Atlas Historique contains a series of wonderful coloured plates, some of the most beautiful of early views of Australia and fine natural history images, while the superb series of portraits of Aborigines represents the most compassionate yet honest portrayal of the displaced natives to be seen in any of the early voyage accounts.

The narrative of the expedition was begun by Péron, and completed by Freycinet after Péron's death. A tacit agreement between Péron and Freycinet, both of whom disliked Baudin, kept the commander's name mostly absent from the account of the expedition. Flinders completed his survey of the Australian coast before Baudin, but his imprisonment by the French in Mauritius for seven years resulted in the French exploration account being published first. Consequently, the Baudin-Freycinet narrative includes the first complete and fully detailed map of the Australian continent. It is justly one of the most famous depictions of Australia ever produced, with virtually the entire southern coast labelled "Terre Napoléon", indicating French colonial ambitions. The map, controversial even today, is often said to have been at least partly based on Flinders's charts and papers seized by the French. It is one of the most beautiful as well as one of the most famous of all maps of Australia.

This is a very good example of the so-called "general reader's set", the form in which the book is usually seen, comprising the full narrative account and the Atlas Historique with its coloured plates. Volumes on hydrography, separately published and distributed by another bookseller, do not normally form part of a set.
Hill, 1329; Wantrup , 78a & 79a.

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• ordernr.: 712_640

• bookseller: Hordern House (AUSTRALIA)