Physical description

Captain Cook's Voyages Round The World
Author: Captain James Cook
Editor: M. K. Beddie.
Publisher: Matthew Brown, Newcastle Upon Tyne. (At Bible Shop the Fresh Market)
Date: 1790
Brown plain leather hardcover badly spotted. The spine has a Library label with an inscription.

Publication type

non-fiction

Inscriptions & markings

The label on spine cover with typed text RH 910.41 COO
Paste down front end paper has a sticker from Warrnambool Mechanics Institute and Free Library

Summary

This specific printing of Captain Cook's voyages is a fascinating piece of late 18th-century provincial book history. This is a rare 18th-century provincial English edition. In the definitive reference work for Cook collectors M. K. Beddie’s Bibliography of Captain James Cook this exact printing is catalogued and recognised globally as Beddie No. 44. It was issued as a multi-volume set, typically bound in three thick octavo volumes or sometimes split into four. Rather than just copying the standard London texts, this specific edition is an expansive compilation. It includes Cook's three major voyages alongside supplementary accounts of the era, such as Captain Furneaux’s journals, Commodore Phipps’s expedition to the North Pole and, notably, Governor Arthur Phillip’s historic voyage to Botany Bay and the establishment of the Port Jackson colony.