Item #3802480 'O-Tahiti' [in] Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaft und Litteratur. Georg FORSTER.
'O-Tahiti' [in] Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaft und Litteratur.

'O-Tahiti' [in] Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaft und Litteratur.

Göttingen: Johann Christian Dieterich, 1780.

Small octavo, a handsome copy in the original decorative wrappers (thus retaining the publisher's prospectus on the front and rear endpapers), untrimmed.

Forster on Spanish visits to Tahiti

A good copy and now rare: known to O'Reilly & Reitman's exhaustive bibliography as the earliest full publication regarding the Spanish voyages to Tahiti in the 1770s. This is the first issue of the first volume of the Göttingisches Magazin, the important scientific periodical edited by Georg Forster and Georg Lichtenberg. Included here is Georg Forster's notable contribution on Tahiti, a 36-page essay on the Spanish voyages to Tahiti in the 1770s.

A good copy and now rare: known to O'Reilly & Reitman's exhaustive bibliography as the earliest full publication regarding the Spanish voyages to Tahiti in the 1770s. This is the first issue of the first volume of the Göttingisches Magazin, the important scientific periodical edited by Georg Forster and Georg Lichtenberg. Included here is Georg Forster's notable contribution on Tahiti, a 36-page essay on the Spanish voyages to Tahiti in the 1770s.

This essay is revelatory concerning the continuing interest and expertise of the Forsters regarding the Pacific, beginning as it does with Georg's discussion of how his father had received, in Summer 1778, a Spanish manuscript regarding Tahiti from the Director of the King's Botanical Gardens in Madrid, Don Casimir Gomez Ortega. This would have been of consuming interest to both Forsters, who had spent many months at Tahiti during Cook's second voyage, and who had speculated at length in their printed accounts about reports of Spanish sailors visiting the region between Cook's first and second visits. The work includes some 87 scholarly notes by Forster on the Spanish observations on Tahiti.

Such an early report of Spanish activity in the region, which includes Forster's particular notice of the voyages of Don Juan de Langara y Huarte and Don Domingo Buenechea, commanders of two of the three Spanish voyages to the region in the 1770s, is an attractive and conspicuously early reference to Tahiti. Indeed, as O'Reilly & Reitman's bibliography attests, there was almost no contemporary work on the Spanish visits, despite them being a matter of some concern for the British at the time.

O'Reilly-Reitman, 512.

Condition Report: Neatly rebacked, wrappers professionally strengthened.

Price (AUD): $5,450.00

US$3,580.52   Other currencies

Ref: #3802480

Condition Report