[TRAVEL & EXPLORATION]. COOK, James, Capt. (1728-1779). A voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Undertaken by the command of His Majesty for making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere... in His Majesty’s Ships the Resolution and Discovery, in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779 and 1780. London H. Hughs; G. Nicol; T. Cadell 1785.

3 volumes, 4to (305 x 232 mm). Engraved medallion vignettes on title-pages, 23 (of 24) engraved maps and charts (mostly folding), folding letterpress table, without 63 of the plates that were “cautioned” by the publisher to booksellers not to have them bound up but instead issued in a separate volume in folio (not present); also without the “Death of Cook” plate that was later issued but is sometimes seen bound in into the Third Voyage. (Light spotting, offsetting to text from plates.) Contemporary calf (rebacked to style, fore-corners repaired, endpapers renewed). Provenance: armorial bookplate on pastedowns).

Second edition of Cook's Third Voyage, "considered typographically superior to the first edition which was a contemporary opinion borne out from a presentation inscription in a set from Isaac Smith (Mrs. Cook’s relative) addressed to Mrs. Cook’s physician, Doctor Elliotson (now at the Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales) calling it 'much superior to the first both in paper & letter press'” (Forbes). For his last Voyage, Cook was ordered to seek a North-West Passage and to return Omai to Tahiti. From Cape Horn they sailed to the Kerguelens (named Desolation Island by Cook), Tasmania, and New Zealand, charting and mapping all the way, then north, discovering the Hawaiian Islands (which Cook considered his most valuable discovery) and Christmas Island. Cook charted the American West Coast from Northern California through the Bering Strait to 70 deg. 44’ N. He returned to Hawaii for the winter and was killed in an "unhappy skirmish" with the natives over a boat. Also on board were James Burney, William Bligh, James Colnett, and George Vancouver, who all made their own great contributions to navigation and discovery. The present work resulting from their voyage is “ARGUABLY THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK ON THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS, that documents all aspects of Hawaiian culture at the point of discovery by Europeans…and is in fact one of the most important English books published in the last quarter of the eighteenth century” (ibid). “Cook earned his place in history by opening up the Pacific to Western civilization and by the foundation of British Australia. The world was given for the first time an essentially complete knowledge of the Pacific Ocean and Australia, and Cook proved once and for all that there was no great southern continent, as had always been believed. He also suggested the existence of Antarctic land in the southern ice ring, a fact which was not proved until the explorations of the nineteenth century” (PMM).

Beddie, Mitchell Library 650, 1216, 1543; Forbes 62; Hill 782, 358, 361; Holmes 5, 24, 47; PMM 223; Rosove 77.A2; Sabin 30934, 16245, 16250. A TALL COPY AND NEARLY AS LARGE AS COPIES SEEN UNCUT IN ORIGINAL BOARDS.