Paris: Hotel de Thou, 1778. In seven volumes, comprising: six octavo text volumes, and one quarto atlas. First French octavo edition. With half-titles in text volumes. Illustrated with folding table in text Vol. VI, and 66 engraved plates (many folding or double-page). Full contemporary mottled calf, morocco spine labels, stamped in gilt, rubbing to extremities; some very light intermittent spotting. Provenance: Henry C. McLean (ownership book-plates). Brunet II, 255; Beddie/Mitchell 1224

First French octavo edition of the official account of Captain James Cook's second voyage. Voyage dans l'Hemisphere Austral, et Autor du Monde... chronicles the second voyage of Captain James Cook, which took place from 1772-1775 and saw Cook and his ship, the HMS Resolution, become the first to venture south of the Antarctic Circle. Publication of the work was complicated by the ship's naturalist, Johann Reinhold Forster, claiming that he had been granted exclusive publication rights by Lord Sandwich, a situation which caused so much animosity between Cook and Forster that Forster commissioned his son, Georg, to write his own account of the voyage which was published six weeks before Cook's own.

Two French editions, both translated by Suard, appeared in 1778: one in five text volumes together with an atlas volume with 65 plates; and the present work, in six text volumes with an atlas volume containing 66 plates. The importance of the present work lies in the fact that Suard adds passages by Forster not included in his earlier work.