Dalrymple's masterwork of Pacific mapping: an appealing presentation set of this fundamental voyage book, inscribed by Alexander Dalrymple on the title-page to the Library of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris with his distinctive signature (familiar from the imprint of many of his major maps). The set later formed part of the collection of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle (the Jardin des Plantes), subsequently released and joining the library of Cuvier, the influential French naturalist and zoologist, with his neat stamp in volume two.

Dalrymple's masterwork of Pacific mapping: an appealing presentation set of this fundamental voyage book, inscribed by Alexander Dalrymple on the title-page to the Library of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris with his distinctive signature (familiar from the imprint of many of his major maps). The set later formed part of the collection of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle (the Jardin des Plantes), subsequently released and joining the library of Cuvier, the influential French naturalist and zoologist, with his neat stamp in volume two.

The work, richly illustrated, collects all the major accounts of Spanish and Dutch voyages from Magellan onwards, with particularly important early English-language notices of Quiros and Tasman. Dalrymple (1737-1808), an old East Indies hand and later the Hydrographer to the Admiralty (after he had mended quite a few fences), was one of the great historians and theorists of Pacific and south-east Asian mapping. He has been called 'the first critical editor of discoveries in Australasia and Polynesia' (Hill).

Dalrymple had hoped that his expertise, and particularly his rare Discoveries made in the South Pacific Ocean which he distributed privately to Sir Joseph Banks and others, would have convinced the Admiralty to see him appointed to the command of the Endeavour voyage. He long smarted over what he perceived to be the insult of being overlooked for Cook. His bitter disappointment is laid bare in the genuinely remarkable anti-dedication, a series of thinly-veiled insults to great figures in Pacific voyaging, including both John Byron 'who discovered scarcely anything but Patagonians' and Samuel Wallis, who 'infatuated with female blandishments forgot for what he went abroad and hastened back to amuse the European world with stories of enchantments…'.

The collation of all of Dalrymple's works is fantastically complicated, but he first published the first volume of these Historical Collections in mid-1769 in what is now recognised to be a very rare variant issue. The present version, with a series of variations (chiefly relating to the wild preliminaries), was published in January 1770, the "standard" issue according to the Dalrymple scholar Andrew Cook. This set has the scarce 'Teepye' lobster plate, which is absent more often than not.

The present set is also extra-illustrated with one of Dalrymple's strictly contemporary charts, 'A Map of part of Borneo, and the Sooloo Archipelago', based on his own explorations in the region while he was serving on the Cuddalore and London during his three voyages to the Philippines between 1761 and 1764.

This is an excellent example of the rare first issue of the much reissued map, printed on thin laid paper and dated 20 October 1769. It was engraved by T. Jeffreys: most known examples are listed with a 1775 imprint, newly engraved by W. Whitchurch, and this first issue seems uncommon.

The most remarkable aspect of the map is the small printed and neatly trimmed 'overslip' (a sort of cartographical equivalent of Repton's Red Book overlays), meaning that the waters of Palawan can be viewed in two states, before and after Dalrymple's survey. Of particular interest is the small note on this overslip which confirms that it is derived "chiefly from the information of Bahatol an intelligent old Pilot" from the region.