COOK, THE DISCOVERER. By Georg Forster.
Sydney. Hordern House. 276pp. $325
REVIEWER: Colin Steele
The Mitchell, of course, like the National Library of Australia is a wonderful repository of Cook material.The Sydney firm of Hordern House continue their excellent work in publishing Australiana related items with the sumpuously produced Cook the Discoverer, the sixth in their Australian Maritime Series for the Maritime Museum. This comprises the first full translation from the German of Georg Forster's seminal account of James Cook, published in Berlin in 1787 as Cook, der Entdecker. Hordern House commisioned the new English translation, accompanied by an introductory essay from Dr Nigel Erskine of the Australian National Maritime Museum. The original German text is also published in facsimile format. As an eighteen-year-old, Georg Forster joined his father, Johann Reinhold Forster on Cook's second voyage (1772-75). Erskine's essay 'After The Fall - George Forster and the image of Captain Cook' highlights the troubled relationship between the elder Forster and the other voyagers. For the younger Forster, however, Cook was not only a superb navigator, but also an inspirational leader and a contibutor to the progress of the Enlightenment.Martin Lutz, the current German Ambassador to Australia, notes in his foreword that " it seems incredible that we have had to wait 220 years for an English translation of such an essay, which has long been recognised as one of the best - and earliest - of comtemporary biographies of the great voyager." Cook the Discoverer physically resembles the works of the eighteenth century with its quarter tan kangaroo binding.Carr in his chapter 'From Gutenberg to Google' writes "the microchip and the computer have not made Gutenberg obsolete. The virtual book is virtually unreadable for any length of time; and browsing a book is so much easier when you can hold it in your hands. There's something enduringly effective about print on paper, by contrast with print on screen". Cook the Discoverer is such a book to hold, smell and read ! The book future will be a hybrid one but we must never forget to cherish the historical knowledge banks of history, such as the Mitchell and the Bodleian, as we descend into cyberspace.
