Resa till Goda Hopps-Udden, södra pol-kretsen och omkring jordklotet, samt till Hottentott- och Caffer-landen, åren 1772-76.

Stockholm : Anders J. Nordström, 1783; Carl Deleen, 1802 – 1818. Octavo, three volumes, fine early nineteenth century Swedish half-calf over marbled boards, spines in compartments with contrasting red morocco title labels, the last two volumes bound in uniform, with the volume numbers I; II  reversed by the binder, a fine set in early bindings from the period.

Vol. I (1783) : pp. xiv (misnumbered xv); 766 (duplicating the pagination 701-704 with subsequent misnumbering); 9 folding copperplate plates of fauna and artefacts; folding copperplate map (the map lightly water stained). Vol. II (1802) : folding copperplate map of the Southern hemisphere; pp. [xii]; 179 [1]; 5 etched plates by E. Åkerlund; folding aquatint plate (signed C. A.); one copperplate, sample of Tahitian tapa bound between pp. 178-9 (described on pp 103-4). Vol. III (1818), titled Resa omkring jordklotet, i sällskap med kapit. J. Cook och hrr Forster. Åren 1772, 73, 74 och 1775 : pp. [ii]; 234; mounted sheet of Tongan tapa cloth; [4], 8 etched plates, folding aquatint plate (signed C. G.), a couple of small splits along the folds of the plates, musical notations, scattered pale foxing, crossed out contemporary signature of J. A. Norberg to the final two volumes, a very good, complete set.

The first edition of Sparrman’s account of Cook’s second voyage, a very rare complete set printed over a span of 35 years, including two samples of tapa cloth collected on the voyage in Tahiti and the Friendly Islands (Tonga).

Anders Sparrman was a young Swedish naturalist working in the Cape of Good Hope when Cook arrived there in 1772. He was enlisted as an assistant to the naturalists Johann and Georg Forster and sailed with Cook on his second circumnavigation, eventually returning to Sweden in 1776. The first volume of his account largely concerns his time in Africa. It is a detailed and extensive work, described by Kroepelien as ‘perhaps the most widely read Swedish travel book written before the nineteenth century’. Nineteen years later, Sparrman published the second volume of his account, which commences with his embarkation on board the Resolution at Cape Town and closes with the arrival of the Resolution and Adventure at Raiatea. Another sixteen years followed before Sparrman published his third volume, which describes the final leg of Cook’s great second voyage.

A complete set of Sparrman is one of the great bibliographic rarities among publications relating to Captain Cook, as well as being a desirable “artefact” in that it contains tapa specimens collected in situ by the naturalist. Du Rietz in Bibliotheca Polynesiana (1229) spends some time explaining that the second and third Pacific volumes serve as a sequel to Sparrman’s African activities contained in volume one, and that these two volumes with their tapa specimens are ‘perhaps the most desirable of all Scandinavian books relating to the Pacific’.

An outstanding copy of one of the great first hand accounts of Cook’s second voyage, complete with tapa cloth specimens collected in the South Seas by the author.

Kroepelien, 1218 (vol. I), 1228 (vols. II & III); Holmes, 45 (vol. I), 78 (vol. II), 81 (vol. III – unseen); O’Reilly-Reitman, 400, 401, 402; Beddie, 1274 (first two volumes only); Bagnall, 5275 (unseen);  Rosove, 315. A1, 315-1.B1 – 315-2.B1 (erroneously identifying the 1802 volume as the second edition); Mendelssohn II, p.414 (vols. I and II only); Spence, 1144; Howes U.S.iana, 820; not in Hill; not in Renard.