Cook, Capt. James; John Hawkesworth

An account of the voyages undertaken by the order of his present majesty for making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, And successively performed by Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret, And Captain Cook, in the Dolphin, the Swallow, and the Endeavor: drawn up From the Journals which were kept by the several Commanders, And from the Papers of Joseph Banks, Esq; By John Hawkesworth, LL.D. In three volumes. Illustrated with cuts, and a great Variety of charts and maps relative to Countries now first discovered, or hitherto but imperfectly known. Vol. I. [- Vol. II., - Vol. III].

Three volumes. London: for William Strahan and Thomas Cadell, 1773. Second edition.

Quarto (12 5/16” x 9 7/8”, 313mm x 251mm):

Vol. I: binder’s blank, A⁴ a–e⁴ f² A–3L⁴ 3M–3N², binder’s blank [$2 signed, –A1]. 258 leaves, pp. [12] (title, blank, 3pp. dedication, blank, 6pp. contents) i ii–xxi xxii–xxiii xxiv–xxxiv xxxv xxxvi [12] (3pp. directions for the binder, errata, 8pp. preface) 1–3 4–456. With 27 engravings, of which 14 are folding maps and 6 are folding plates.
Vol. II: A⁴ a⁴(–a4)B–Zz⁴ 3A–3F⁴ [$2 signed, –A1]. 211 leaves, pp. i–xi (title, blank, 5pp. contents, blank, half-title, blank, introduction) xii–xiv 1 2–410. With 17 engravings, of which 9 are folding maps and 5 folding plates.
Vol. III: A–3C⁴ 3D² [$2 signed, –A1]. 198 leaves, pp. 1–7 (title, blank, 4pp. contents, chapter title) 8–395 [1] (blank). With 11 engravings, 3 of which are folding maps and 2 folding plates.
With 52 engraved plates in toto.

Bound in half calf over marbled boards. On the spine, 5 panels. “hawkesworth / voyages” gilt to the second panel, number gilt to the fourth. All edges of the text-block untrimmed. Presented in a brown buckram clamshell box with “hawkesworth / voyages” gilt to a tan sheepskin lettering piece on the side panel.

Generally worn, with boards rubbed and extremities skinned. Craquelure to the spines, with losses to the heads and tails of each backstrip. Loose binding throughout. Leaves evenly toned with sporadic spotting, edges occasionally soiled. Leaves d2–d3 detached from volume I. In volume II: front board nearly detached, binding split and quires Aa–Mm detached. Dampstaining to the lower edge from U1–U4. Lacking a4. Per fess sable and ermine armorial bookplate with the motto “nec celeri nec forti” and an inked manuscript note — “Cat^d” — to the front pastedown of volume I.


Captain James Cook (1728–1779) was a British explorer, cartographer and naval officer, known for his three voyages to the Pacific. He provided the first recorded contact with Eastern Australia and Hawaii, and the first circumnavigation of New Zealand. His travels also included the Antarctic, America, and the Bering Strait. His first voyage — spanning three years in the Southern Hemisphere on HMS Endeavor — was commissioned by King George III and departed from Plymouth Dockyard in August of 1768. The Royal Society had spent the better part of that year petitioning the King to finance a scientific expedition in service of observing Venus crossing the face of the Sun, which would aid in measuring the distance from the Earth to the Sun. The voyage would double as an exploration of the Southern seas and a search for the mythical Terra Australis Incognita, though this part of the mission was not made public until the day before the ship launched. The Royal Society had suggested that Alexander Dalrymple, a geographer from Scotland, be given the post, but he would only accept if he was bestowed a brevet commission as a captain. Aghast by this demand, Navy officials chose Cook instead. On his final voyage to the Pacific Islands, tensions rose between the Hawaiian population and the European explorers, spurred on by Europeans desecrating a burial site. This resulted in Captain Cook’s murder and dismemberment, leaving some of his body parts for a burial at sea.

The task of compiling and publishing the official account of Captain Cook’s first voyage was given to John Hawkesworth (1715–1773), a literary critic, essayist, and editor of The Gentleman’s Magazine. The Hawkesworth volumes were one of most popular publications of the XVIIIc, with the 2,000 sets of the first edition released on June 9^th, 1773, selling out almost immediately and necessitating a second edition of 2,500 sets published less than 8 weeks later. Despite the commercial success, the initial release was a PR nightmare for Hawkesworth. He faced immense criticism due to the text’s horrendous formatting and numerous pagination and bibliographical errors (the majority of which were corrected for this, the second edition).

The bookplate, which boasts an unusual phrase (trans. “neither fast nor strong”), is likely from the late 1700s. Heraldic mottos with a similar sentence structure crop up throughout the late XVIIIc, such as the more popular “nec elatus nec dejectus” of the Thomas and Shanahan families. The United Kingdom’s National Trust Collections cites a similar bookplate, which they posit is XVIIIc, but is not yet identified.

Theodore “Ted” Benttinen (1948–2023) was an MIT-educated oceanographer and explorer who went to both poles on research missions. Benttinen amassed a formidable collection of books of exploration, particularly strong in Pacific voyages as well as in polar accounts. The present volume was lot 59 in the Sotheby’s New York 9 December 2024 sale of his library.

Hill 782; Sabin 30934.

Cataloged by G.R. Murdock

Item #GRM0045

Price: $7,950