Engelske capitainens Wilhelm Blighs resa genom södra werlds-hafvet, tolf hundrade sjömil i öpen båt, från Tofoa till Timor.

Upsala : J. Edmans enka, 1792 [but 1793]. Duodecimo (150 x 90 mm), contemporary half-calf (worn), spine with gilt-ruled raised bands and gilt lettering (tear to leather on lower section of spine, the front outer hinge starting to loosen); front pastedown with early acquisition note ‘Joh: Erik Sundberg er retta egaren till denna bok Boda d. 13de febr. 1814’; title-page with woodcut vignette and ownership signature of Joh: Erik Sundberg; pp. 70,73-119, [1], [2 blank]; lacking the front endpaper, most leaves with a very pale water stain around the bottom of the gutter, a few leaves dog-eared, short tear to fore-edge margin on pp. 53-4, tiny perforation at fore-edge margin of pp. 79-82; otherwise internally clean and sound.

Second, revised issue of the first Swedish edition (abridged) of Bligh’s account.

‘… almost unprocurable’ (Du Rietz)

Translated by Samuel Ödmann, this work contains an account of the mutiny on the Bounty and of Bligh’s epic open-boat journey to Timor from Tofoa in 1789.

There are two variants of this edition, which have identical title-pages but some significant differences in typesetting. The second variant (1793, as here) is the rarer of the two. It is partly reset with Ödmann’s commentaries included as footnotes instead of being placed at the end of the work. In his foreword he writes that he has been using Bligh’s original as well as two German translations (those of Georg Forster and Johann Reinhold Forster) of the same text.

According to du Rietz, the appendix entitled Nyaste tidningar från Otahiti (pp. 105-19) is ‘an abridgement in Swedish of chapter 20 in the first edition of Stockdale’s Botany Bay volume 1789 […]. This chapter deals with Lady Penrhyn’s (captain William Sever) visit to the Society Islands in 1788, the account being compiled from John Watt’s journal.’ The work also includes some notes on Tahiti written by Ödmann.

The account of the earlier part of the Bounty‘s voyage and of Bligh’s return from Timor to England appeared for the first time in Swedish in 1795, in an edition anonymously translated by Carl Fredrik Landell and published in Nyköping by Hammarin (Ferguson, 216). It was called the ‘Förste delen’ (first part): it supplemented Ödmann’s translation, which Bligh regarded as the second part of the narrative.

Du Rietz, Bibliotheca Polynesiana, 90: ”almost unprocurable”; Ferguson, 129 (but describing the 1792 variant)

For the 1792 variant, also see: Kroepelien, 90; O’Reilly & Reitman, 554

Trove locates only the SLNSW and NLA copies (both apparently the earlier of the two variants).