93 BAUMAN RARE BOOKS “One Of The Most Terrible Journeys On Record” 102FRANKLIN, John. Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea. London, 1823. Thick quarto, contemporary full marbled calf gilt. $6000 First edition of Franklin’s first overland Arctic expedition, illustrated with 30 engraved plates—11 hand-colored—along with four large folding maps. Franklin’s expedition lasted three years—”years of frustration and ultimately catastrophe for a naval leader unaccustomed to the lubberly world of land exploration. Sir John [Franklin] had not hiked, canoed, or hunted anywhere in the Arctic, but he was assigned the task of traveling north from Great Slave Lake in northern Canada to the coast of Victoria Island, in order to map the coast west to Alaska... The expedition… was forced to return, for they were near starvation and unable to kill sufficient game such as musk oxen for food… As Franklin’s expedition trekked back toward Great Slave Lake, they were reduced to eating old shoes and other scraps of leather” (Officer & Page, A Fabulous Kingdom, 81-2). “It is one of the most terrible journeys on record... Franklin’s narrative at once became a classic of travel literature” (Hill 635). Some mild occasional foxing, chiefly marginal; joints expertly repaired, only slight rubbing to board edges. A handsome copy in nicely refurbished contemporary calf-gilt. “A Masterpiece Of Descriptive Travel” 103ANSON, George. A Voyage Round the World, in the Years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV. London, 1748. Thick quarto, period-style full dark brown mottled calf gilt. $9500 First edition of the first official account of Commodore Anson’s hard-pressed but ultimately successful challenge to superior Spanish seapower, illustrated with 42 folding engraved plates, maps, plans and charts, several over 35 inches wide. “This famous and unfortunate expedition, consisting at the start of eight ships, was sent under the command of George Anson at the beginning of the war with Spain, to harass the Spaniards on the western coast of South America. Seven ships were lost around Cape Horn and on the coast of Chile and out of 900 men, 600 perished. The primary object of the expedition was not attained, but by the capture of the Manila Galleon near China, Anson and the surviving members of his crew reached England much the richer. This account is the official one… It is a model of what such literature should be” (Cox). One folding plate remargined, not affecting image; a few other plates with slight edge-wear or creasing, text and images generally clean. Very handsomely bound in period-style calf-gilt.
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