# 45873

FREYCINET, Rose Marie Pinon de (1794-1832)

Campagne de l’Uranie (1817-1820) : journal de Madame Rose de Saulces de Freycinet, d’après le manuscrit original

$2,200.00 AUD

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/ accompagné de notes par Charles Duplomb. Paris : Societé d’Éditions Géographiques, Maritimes et Coloniales, 1927. First edition. Large quarto (285 x 230 mm), publisher’s printed wrappers with French flaps (sunned, spine with water staining and small paper loss at ends), pp. [2 blank], xiii, [1 blank], 190, [2], with 25 plates (13 in colour, 3 double-page including panorama of Sydney and Sandwich Islands baptismal scene) and 1 map; partially unopened, last few leaves (including Sydney panorama) with pale water stain around head of gutter, otherwise contents clean and fresh throughout.

Published here for the first time are the letters written to her friend Caroline de Nanteuil by Rose de Freycinet (1794-1832) while on board the Uranie during her round-the-world voyage of 1817-20. Louis Claude Saulces de Freycinet (1779-1841) had smuggled his wife – dressed in men’s clothing – onto the Uranie at Toulon before the expedition’s departure.

Together, the letters form a first-hand voyage account from a woman’s perspective. They are edited here by Charles Duplomb, and preceded by an introduction by Baron de Freycinet, a direct descendant. This first edition is magnificently illustrated with collotype plates after Jacques Arago, the expedition’s official voyage artist. The voyage, whose objectives were largely scientific in nature, visited Western Australia and New South Wales, Hawaii, Timor, New Guinea, and other Pacific Islands on its three year journey.

Scarce. Three copies located in Australian libraries (SLNSW; SLQ; SLSA)