PARRY'S SECOND VOYAGE FOR A NORTHWEST PASSAGE, 1824 ILLUSTRATED FIRST EDITION

PARRY, William Edward. Journal of a Second Voyage for the Discovery of a NorthWest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific; Performed in the Years 1821, 22, 23 in His Majesty's Ships Fury and Hecla. London: John Murray, 1824. Quarto, period-style three-quarter brown morocco gilt, raised bands, red morocco spine label, marbled boards and endpapers. $3000.

First edition of Parry's second voyage, illustrated with eight large folding maps and panoramas and 31 full-page charts and copperplate engravings, handsomely bound.

This account of Parry's second voyage is particularly important for its depiction of Eskimo customs, ceremonies, and domestic life and its maps showing the discoveries made in the Polar Sea north of Canada. "Throughout the whole of this splendid work, the characteristics of the Esquimaux… absorb the attention of the writer. The last 79 pages are entirely devoted to the subject of the aborigines of the Arctic lands… of the beautifully engraved copperplates, 22 are illustrative of their fishing and walrushunting, their boats, summer tents, winter huts, villages, modes of traveling, building and hunting, interior of their dwellings, their villages… and portraits of characteristic individuals singly and in groups. The work is in truth a splendid treatise on aboriginal life" (Field 1184). Sabin 58864. Lande 1385. Smith 7963. Hill 1312. Old owner ink signature.

Light marginal foxing and occasional marginal dampstain to plates, a few maps with expertly repaired short closed tears at stubs; text generally clean, binding handsome and fine.