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Two volumes, quarto, with 34 plates in the second volume, including the large folding 'Trigonometrical Chart of the Archipelago of Santa Cruz, &c.; some foxing and staining but a very good copy in the original boards, extremities a little worn and neatly rebacked with calf, original printed paper labels (chipped) on the upper boards. First edition: a splendid association copy of this book, which contains a significant Flinders component, inscribed on the front endpapers of each volume by the hydrographer and coastal explorer Phillip Parker King, dated 1823. As well as a major essay by Matthew Flinders, Copeland's book includes an important collection of essays on surveying by Beautemps-Beaupré (who sailed with d'Entrecasteaux in search of La Pérouse) and Alexander Dalrymple (the Hydrographer to the British Admiralty), with a long analysis, with accompanying large-format map, of the lessons that could be learnt from the complex mapping of the Solomon Islands first undertaken by Captain Carteret in 1767 and greatly expanded by Beautemps-Beaupré as part of their extensive surveys of the region in the 1790s. The Flinders section derives from the Investigator voyage, and is one of the more uncommon of any of Flinders's works. In his introduction, Copeland specifically notes that "the extract from Captain Flinders is added, as an important one, which must be equally interesting and desirable to all who do not possess his most valuable, but expensive, work, the Voyage to, and Surveys of, Australia, published in 1814". This must have been of particular appeal to King, who has boldly signed both volumes with his name and the date of 1823, meaning that he purchased the book hot from the presses in the months just after he returned to England on the Bathurst in April of that year, after six years spent on his arduous survey voyages of Australia, and three years before his departure on the Adventure. King was in many senses Flinders's successor, and largely completed the coastal exploration of Australia begun by his predecessor. Indeed, Flinders had personally encouraged him at the start of his career as hydrographer. As Marsden Hordern comments, after his return to England in 1810 Flinders got in touch with the King family and took the young midshipman under his wing, introducing him to Sir Joseph Banks at one of the Sunday evening conversations at the famous house in Soho Square, and through him to Sir Thomas Hurd the hydrographer, under whom King's career really began. Much like Flinders, whose last years in England after his release from French imprisonment were spent honing his writing and reading everything he could get his hands on, King took advantage of every source he could acquire in writing his own Narrative of the Mermaid and Bathurst voyages (1826). The ownership of a pertinent book such as this connects the two eminent men in a poignant way. .
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