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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Denis Joachim Collection
• Sale Date:
  19 Jun 2016 ~ 2pm - Session 1: Lots 1 - 321
  20 Jun 2016 ~ 10am - Session 2: Lots 322 - 480
  20 Jun 2016 ~ 2pm - Session 3: Lot 481 - 688
  20 Jun 2016 ~ 6pm - Session 4: Lots 689 - 818
• Lot #:
  7
• Lot Description:
  Baudin. Péron, François Auguste, Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet, Charles Lesueur, and Nicholas Petit
  Voyage de Découvertes aux Terres Australes exécuté par ordre de Sa Majesté l’Empereur et Roi, sur les Corvettes le Géographe, le Naturaliste, et la Goelette le Casuarina, Pendant les Années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804... Rédigé par M. F. Péron... Tome Premier [Tome Second... continué par M. Louis Freycinet...]. Four volumes in three, comprising two-volume quarto text with portrait frontispiece and two folding tables, and two-part large quarto atlas containing 40 plates (23 coloured and two folding) and 14 maps (two double-page and folding; two with old tape repairs), touch of marginal worming in volume two, uniformly bound in tree calf of the period, spines gilt in compartments, double contrasting labels. Paris, 1807 – 1811 – 1816.
• Notes:
  The official account of the important Baudin voyage to the Pacific. The so-called “general reader’s set”, the form in which the book is usually seen, comprising the full narrative account and the Atlas Historique with its superb coloured plates. In 1800 Napoleon Bonaparte dispatched an expedition in Le Géographe and Le Naturaliste under Nicolas Thomas Baudin. Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet was the expedition hydrographer and François Péron was naturalist. Although Baudin was tardy in following his instructions and so was forestalled by Flinders in the discovery of most of the unknown stretches of the Australian south coast, the complete discovery of the coast was made by Flinders and Baudin in early 1802. The official account of the Baudin expedition was published between 1807 and 1816. François Péron began preparing the narrative for publication but died before the second volume was completed. Louis Freycinet, who had become expedition commander on Baudin’s death in the course of the voyage, then completed Péron’s work. The narrative was illustrated with a two-part atlas of maps and plates, prepared by Charles Lesueur and Nicholas Petit. In preparing the narrative Péron and Freycinet ignored any contribution that Baudin had made to the expedition and failed to acknowledge the discoveries of Flinders, Grant or Murray on the south coast, taking all the credit to themselves. The south coast, discovered by Flinders, who was now imprisoned on Mauritius, they renamed Terre Napoléon, supplying most of the features on the coast named by Flinders with French names. Nevertheless, it is in the French work that the first complete and detailed map of the Australian continent appeared. Assisted substantially by Flinders’s impounded charts, the French map of the continent is one of the most beautiful as well as one of the most famous of all maps of Australia. The publication of Flinders’s own account of the Investigator voyage in 1814 did much to discredit the pretensions of the French, and Freycinet was later to acknowledge the impropriety of their appropriation of what Flinders had discovered. For over a century, the discreditable behaviour of the historians of the expedition, especially Péron, cast a shadow over the entire expedition and it was not until the late twentieth century that a full and proper appreciation of the achievements of the Baudin expedition was possible. Ferguson, 449; Hill 2, 1329; Tooley, 610 – 623; Wantrup, 78a and 79a.
• Estimate:
  A$18,000 - 22,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Books & Manuscripts

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.