Voyage Towards the North Pole First Edition - Constantine John Phipps - Bauman Rare Books

Voyage Towards the North Pole

Constantine John PHIPPS

Item#: 106395 We're sorry, this item has been sold

Voyage Towards the North Pole

Voyage Towards the North Pole

Voyage Towards the North Pole

“AN IMPORTANT ADDITION TO NAUTICAL SCIENCE”: PHIPPS’ VOYAGE TO THE NORTH POLE, 1774

PHIPPS, Constantine John. Voyage Towards the North Pole Undertaken by His Majesty's Command 1773. London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols for J. Nourse, 1774. Quarto, contemporary full dark brown calf rebacked with original spine laid down, red morocco spine label.

First edition of the official account of Phipps’ polar voyage, with three folding maps, 12 engraved folding or double-page plates, and numerous charts and tables, 11 of which are folding.

Commodore Phipps, later Lord Mulgrave, led this expedition in June 1773 "for the purpose of discovering a route to India through the North Polar regions. North of Spitzbergen the sea was absolutely blocked with ice and the vessels had to return. Although unsuccessful the voyage was an important addition to nautical science, and the account of it contains a descriptive catalogue of the natural productions of Spitzbergen. The expedition is also of interest from the fact that Lord Nelson, then 14, accompanied it as a midshipman, and distinguished himself by his encounter with a bear" (Maggs II:870). The account includes "the valuable appendix to the work [which] gives geographical and meteorological observations, zoological and botanical records, accounts of the distillation of fresh water from the sea, and astronomical observations" (Hill, 206-7). Sabin 62572. Fitzgerald 560. Delgado, 55. Lowndes, 1860. Armorial bookplate; later owner ink signature.

A few plates mildly toned, text generally clean, some restoration to extremities of contemporary calf covers. An extremely good copy.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
Armorial Used to describe a binding bearing the coat of arms of the original owner, or with bookplates incorporating the owner’s arms.
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Calf Binding material made from cowhide—versatile, durable, usually tan or brown in color, of smooth texture with no or little apparent grain. Readily marbled (“tree calf”), mottled, diced, colored, polished, tooled in gilt or blind, even scented (known as “russia”). Reverse calf, with a distinctive suede-like texture, is occasionally used.
Chromolithograph Lithograph printed in colors, typically three or more.
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Doublure Pastedowns made not of paper but of leather, for decorative purposes.
Duodecimo (12MO) Smaller than an octavo, typically less than six inches tall; smaller formats, such as 24mo and 32mo, are uncommon.
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Engraving Illustration produced by carving lines into a metal plate. This is an intaglio process, in which ink is poured over the plate, then wiped from the surface, leaving ink only in the recesses made by the engraver’s tools. The image is then transferred by pressing thick dampened paper against the metal plate with great force—requiring engravings to be printed on a separate stock and separate press from any text.
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Foxing Light brown spots that naturally appear on some papers due to oxidation as they age.
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Marginalia Handwritten notes made in the margins by a previous owner.
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Morocco Binding material made from goatskin—versatile, durable, with a distinctive pebbled texture and visible grain. Readily stretched (“straight-grain”), crushed (flattened smooth), tooled in gilt or blind, inlaid with leathers of different colors. So-called because much of the raw material originally came from the tanneries of North Africa (other types of goatskin bindings denoting regions of origin include levant, turkey, niger).
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Wood-Engraving Engraving made with the graver or burin on the cross-section of a piece of boxwood; the harder wood and finer tools allow for more delicate, finely detailed images, while the block can still be set in the page alongside text and printed on the same stock as the text. While much older, wood engravings enjoyed an important renaissance in the late eighteenth century through Thomas Bewick and continued in popularity thorugh the nineteenth century.
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