The 1821 French edition of Krusenstern’s world voyage puts us in mind of a Pacific Midsummer Night’s Dream with its enchanting lithographs, while the aquatints in the 1802 Relación of the Spanish voyage to the American Northwest coast include a depiction of a breathtaking celebration at Nootka Sound in 1792. These are accompanied in our new catalogue by other major voyage or travel books including Laplace’s formidable account of his world voyage, which is also superbly illustrated with aquatint plates, as is the beautiful copy of Lycett’s Views Australia, or New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land Delineated... . The fine set of Cook’s Voyages in the catalogue belonged to one of his early shipmates.

Including works of the later Enlightenment: examples of the curiosity and thirst for scientific knowledge characteristic of that time.

For a few decades either side of 1800, the natural history of the new world was a novel source of excitement throughout Europe. Some examples of the outstanding works produced at the time appear in our catalogue, including: Edward Donovan's justly famous illustrated work on Australian entomology with the celebrated companion volumes on the insects of China and India; Henry Andrews' "The Botanist's Repository" one of the rarest of the famous botanical journals of the late-Georgian era, with superb hand-coloured plates ; and William Jackson Hooker's "Exotic Flora".

As it is the 250^th anniversary of the voyage of His Majesty’s Bark Endeavour into Australian and New Zealand waters we celebrate with this catalogue the achievements of Captain James Cook and his crew.

Much has been discussed about the impact of the English exploring expeditions in the early colonial period. We acknowledge that whatever may have been the eventual impact of these visits to Australia and New Zealand and throughout the wider Pacific, when colonisation came to replace discovery, nothing diminishes the importance of the maritime achievements of  Cook and his crew. This is particularly the case in the scientific areas of astronomy, navigation, cartography and the natural sciences, as well as the first meetings with indigenous peoples, more often in Cook’s case in friendship than in hostility.

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