A superb set of the desirable first French edition of the official account of Cook's third voyage, in outstanding contemporary French bindings bearing the arms of the Ruolz Montchal family and the motto "Toujours pret". A smaller edition in octavo was published at the same time but this larger and handsome version is or course greatly preferred. It is illustrated in the manner of the English publication, and has a version of the famous "Death of Cook" plate based on the original drawing by John Webber (not all copies of the French quarto edition include this plate). Furthermore, the fourth and final volume of the text is complete with all seven appendices, including the folding vocabulary table.

A superb set of the desirable first French edition of the official account of Cook's third voyage, in outstanding contemporary French bindings bearing the arms of the Ruolz Montchal family and the motto "Toujours pret". A smaller edition in octavo was published at the same time but this larger and handsome version is or course greatly preferred. It is illustrated in the manner of the English publication, and has a version of the famous "Death of Cook" plate based on the original drawing by John Webber (not all copies of the French quarto edition include this plate). Furthermore, the fourth and final volume of the text is complete with all seven appendices, including the folding vocabulary table.

The full story of Cook's great third voyage, and his eventual murder while revisiting the Hawaiian Islands that he had discovered earlier during the voyage, was almost as eagerly awaited by the European as by the English public: the approximately forty ediitns that appeared befpre 1800 included vesion sin Fench, Dutch, Geman, ruswsian, Swedish and Italiqan. This French version is th emost handsome of all the 4editiins ager the English official account.

Bligh, Burney, Colnett, Vancouver and Riou - all later to command important voyages of their own - were all members of the expedition, which set out to return Omai to Tahiti and to search for a northwest passage. They called at Kerguelen Island, Tasmania, the Cook, Tonga and Society Islands, turned north and discovered Christmas Island and the Hawaiian Islands and went on to chart the northwest coast of America from Northern California to 70o 44' where they were stopped by pack ice. On their retrn to Hawaii Cook was killed.

The official artist on the voyage was John Webber, and his romantic views of the islands of the Pacific published here remain the most evocative portrayals of the islands — helping to create the notion of an island paradise that so affected the public eagerly reading the voyages of discovery being published in the eighteenth century.

The Ruolz-Montchal family derived from the Ardèche. but moved in the 18th century to the Lyon area, where they held the property of Le Chatelard in Francheville until the early 20th century. Their most famous member was Henri-Catherine-Camille de Ruolz-Montchal (1808–1887), the French industrial chemist, composer, and comte, a friend of both Balzac and Alexandre Dumas.