Journal of a Tour in Iceland in the Summer of 1809
London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown/ John Murray, 1813 [second edition, with additions].
Octavo, two volumes, [vi], cvi, 370 and [iv], 392, [14] (index) pages plus a hand-coloured frontispiece and 4 other plates (2 folding), 3 maps (2 folding) and a table.
Early quarter morocco and plain papered boards (the latter rubbed); extremities worn; tidemarks in the first volume to the top corner of the first few leaves (affecting also the frontispiece and folding map), and in the second volume to the bottom corner of the folding map and the top corner of a handful of leaves at the rear; plates and maps offset; occasional foxing; a couple of trifling paper flaws; essentially a very good set.
The provenance is extraordinary: the half-title of the first volume is inscribed 'To W. Colenso Esq. with Jos D. Hooker's kindest regards. H.M.S. "Erebus" Septr 15 1841'. Captain James Ross and the two ships under his command, Erebus and Terror, spent August to November 1841 in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, between his first and second voyages to the Antarctic. To put this inscription into context, Ross's expedition was the first to enter what is known today as the Ross Sea, the first to sight the Admiralty Mountains, the first to see Victoria Land, Ross Island, Mounts Erebus and Terror, and the Ross Ice Shelf, amongst other momentous discoveries. The Antarctic bibliographer Michael Rosove describes Ross's published account as 'a cornerstone of the Antarctic literature and a monument to one of mankind's greatest expeditions of geographical and scientific exploration'. In Huxley's 'Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker' (1918), specific reference is made to Hooker (the son of the author) meeting Colenso during this visit: 'Hooker, under the guidance of Mr. Colenso, the printer to the missionary establishment, and himself a keen botanist, made a number of excursions into the country ... collecting many specimens'. William Colenso (1811-99) continued to supply specimens to Hooker over many years, and Sir Joseph named the genus 'Colensoa' after him. The set also contains in each volume the bookplate of the physician, naturalist and collector Robert Henry Pulleine (1869-1935, born in NZ, moved to SA in 1881), and the first volume carries the later ownership signature of Sir Douglas Mawson, from whose collection this set has been sourced.
Item #84794
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