Brosses’s Histoire des navigations aux terres Australes – Two Volumes with Seven Maps

This important two volume collection of volumes is Charles de Brosses’s Histoire des navigations aux terres Australes, contenant ce que l’on sçait des moeurs & des productions des contrees decouvertes jusqu’a ce jour, & ou il est traite de l’utilite d’y faire de plus amples decouvertes, & des moyens d’y former un etablissement. The work was published in Paris by Durand in 1756.

The volumes are bound in fine contemporary French ‘cats paw’ calf, spines richly gilt, brown and red morocco lettering-pieces, complete with all errata leaves. There are seven engraved folding maps, six of which were done by Robert de Vaugondy. Leaves 437-450 bound into volume two which detail Dutch discoveries in Australasia and is not always present.

The work was an important recollection of voyages to the South Pacific compiled by Charles de Brosses. It was the first collection focused exclusively on the Pacific. It was intended to stimulate French discovery and colonization in the South Seas. It detailed the expeditions of Vespucci, Magellan, Drake, Sarmiento, Hawkins, Quiros, Noort, Spilbergen, Nodal, Schouten, Dampier, Roggeveen, Anson, and others

Charles de Brosses, comte de Tournay, baron de Montfalcon, seigneur de Vezins et de Prevessin (1709-177) was a noted French scholar and historian. He also contributed to Diderot’s expansive work, Encyclopedie. He served as president of the Burgundian Parliament and a shareholder in the French India Company.

Provenance: ex libris J. A. Dezauche