Ross, James Clark--Hooker, Joseph Dalton

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

The Botany of the Antarctic voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror, 1839-1843. Under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross... [I. Flora Antarctica]. London: Reeve, Brothers, 1844-1847
Paper

FIRST EDITION, 2 volumes, 4to (305 x 233mm.), (vol.1) [6], [v]-xii, [2], 574pp.; (vol.2) [2]pp., 2 dedication leaves, hand-coloured lithographed map, 187 hand-coloured lithographed plates, 13 double-page, contemporary calf with the gilt crest of the Earl of Minto, marbled endpapers and edges, two plate numbers cropped, binding rebacked retaining original spine

Provenance

Earl of Minto, the dedicatee, gilt crest on covers

Literature

Ferguson 3840; Nissen BBI 908; Rosove 172-1.A1; Spence 605; Staton & Tremaine 2654

Catalogue Note

THE DEDICATION COPY. There are two dedications to this work, one to Queen Victoria (dated 1845), and the other to the Earl of Minto, whose copy this is, dated 1847.

“Hooker's passions for botany and travel were combined when he was appointed assistant surgeon aboard HMS Erebus, which… was to spend four years exploring the southern oceans… Before Hooker set sail Charles Lyell of Kinnordy (father of the geologist) had given him the proofs of Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, which he read eagerly, excited but a little overwhelmed at the ‘variety of acquirements, mental and physical, required in a naturalist who should follow in Darwin's footsteps. Hooker was not alone in seeing Darwin as a role model: Ross wanted ‘such a person as Mr. Darwin’ as the expedition's naturalist, but felt that Hooker had not yet proved himself of Darwin's calibre. After Ross appointed him to the inferior position of expedition's botanist Hooker complained to his father ‘what was Mr. D. before he went out? he, I daresay, knew his subject better than I now do, but did the world know him? the voyage with FitzRoy was the making of him (as I hoped this exped. would me)’” (ODNB).

This set is bound differently from that described by Rosove: the title-pages appear to have been transposed, and the text is all in the first volume, the plates in the second.