A particularly fine set, in a most attractive contemporary binding, of the second, first octavo, edition: Sir John Franklin's narrative of the 1819-1822 expedition to the polar north under his command. Assured of guides and ongoing supplies by the Hudson's Bay Company, Franklin and his party of twenty men sought an overland route east of the Coppermine River. Using native canoes to traverse a vast landscape, relations among the men deteriorated as food and supplies dwindled. Cold, exposure and starvation took a harrowing toll as cannibalism and murder erupted amongst the voyagers. A total of nine men died.

A particularly fine set, in a most attractive contemporary binding, of the second, first octavo, edition: Sir John Franklin's narrative of the 1819-1822 expedition to the polar north under his command. Assured of guides and ongoing supplies by the Hudson's Bay Company, Franklin and his party of twenty men sought an overland route east of the Coppermine River. Using native canoes to traverse a vast landscape, relations among the men deteriorated as food and supplies dwindled. Cold, exposure and starvation took a harrowing toll as cannibalism and murder erupted amongst the voyagers. A total of nine men died.

This account was initially published in a lavishly illustrated quarto edition. This second edition in smaller format features four splendidly engraved maps. Franklin, who had served as a midshipman under Matthew Flinders in the Investigator during the circumnavigation of Australia in 1801-04, was later appointed as Lieutenant-Governor of Tasmania from 1837 to 1843. His reputation as an Arctic explorer and his search for the North West Passage grew in the following years, and culminated in the loss of the Erebus and Terror on his final expedition in search of the passage in June 1847.