First edition and probably the earlier of two issues. In lovely condition in a fine contemporary French binding, this is a very scarce narrative of Dumont d'Urville's second, Antarctic, expedition, by the chief surgeon aboard the Zélée. Le Guillou had been excluded from the collaboration of talent which produced the official account of the voyage, following a falling-out with his skipper, and enlisted the help of the artist and writer Jacques Arago to prepare his own account for publication. Arago had been the official artist on the Freycinet expedition, and his book on the Freycinet voyage in its various versions (following Arago's blindness it was published as "Souvenirs d'un aveugle") had proved one of the most popular travel accounts of the first half of the nineteenth century.

First edition and probably the earlier of two issues. In lovely condition in a fine contemporary French binding, this is a very scarce narrative of Dumont d'Urville's second, Antarctic, expedition, by the chief surgeon aboard the Zélée. Le Guillou had been excluded from the collaboration of talent which produced the official account of the voyage, following a falling-out with his skipper, and enlisted the help of the artist and writer Jacques Arago to prepare his own account for publication. Arago had been the official artist on the Freycinet expedition, and his book on the Freycinet voyage in its various versions (following Arago's blindness it was published as "Souvenirs d'un aveugle") had proved one of the most popular travel accounts of the first half of the nineteenth century.

Le Guillou's book unashamedly follows the narrative style of Arago's, and its lithographs have a distinct similarity to Arago's own somewhat eccentric illustrations. This first edition of Le Guillou's book appeared in two forms, the other version with its title-page differently worded, beginning with the words "Complément aux Souvenirs d'un Aveugle", showing even more openly its connection with Arago's earlier book. Priority of the two issues is not certain, although this issue is probably the earlier and certainly seems on the evidence of the few bibliographical listings to be slightly rarer than the other. There were two further editions within two years. As noted by Michael Rosove (private correspondence) there are two different versions of the pagination of two gatherings in volume 2 where pp 361 to 368 are incorrectly numbered 381-388.

The publication was controversial: it was felt to be slighting the memory of Dumont d'Urville and provoked an angry response "Protestation des membres de l'expédition au Pôle austral et dans l'Océanie contre une attaque injurieuse à la mémoire du contre-amiral Dumont d'Urville" published in Annales maritimes et coloniales for 1842.

The fine lithograph plates, mostly the work of Legrand, give a quite different picture of the progress of the expedition than the formal published account. The two main visits to Australia – to Torres Strait and Port Essington, and later Tasmania – are both described at length, and each has a lithograph illustration, one a moody image of the two ships careened in Torres Strait, and the other ("Punition des matelots à Hobart-Town") showing a sailor working a treadmill under armed guard.