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While in the modern era “Brits Abroad” is shorthand for ill-behaved culture-averse pleasure-seekers littering the warm expanses of the world, Albion’s denizens have a distinguished — if still largely-ill-behaved — history of exploration outside of package holidays. It is perhaps natural for island-dwellers to be curious, but Great Britain got that way because of the enthusiasm with which she investigated and capitalized on the rest of the globe. (Fear not; I write this as a (former) long-time resident of the UK, and a great Anglophile.)

Seeking a heuristic for the long list that follows, I’ve made a five-part division. The first, simply enough, is Piracy. The great names of exploration — Drake and Raleigh and Hawkins — were individuals either with (“privateers”) or without official sanction. Their casting across the seas and harassing Spanish galleons was foremost for personal gain, following hunches or myths rather than a plan drawn up by a syndicate. Starting with the 1513 Strasbourg Ptolemy owned by a courtier to Elizabeth I (no. 1), by way of Dudley’s resentful and vengeful Arcano del mare (no. 7) and finally Raleigh’s circumspect Three discourses (no. 13), these books limn the lone-wolf ethos that has kept this period so robustly in the public imagination.

No. 7, Dudley's Dell'arcano del Mare

Eventually, individual peregrinations give way to a mode of systematic voyaging, Exploration proper. This sees the beginning of a major subgroup of the books that follow: first translations into English of atlases or travel accounts originally in European languages. When Waghenaer’s Spieghel der Zeevaerdt was brought into a Privy Council meeting in 1585, the need for a translated edition — the English, then as now, being reluctant to trudge through Dutch — was noted officially, and the Lord Chancellor commissioned from the Council’s clerk an English translation, The Mariner’s Mirrour (no. 14). The imprimatur began a long tradition of officially-sanctioned voyages such as Cook’s (nos. 18, 19 and 22) or else translations, such as the Schadenfreude-filled Journal of the Last Voyage of Joutel (no. 17).

No. 19, Webber's portrait of a man of Prince William Sound, painted on Cook's voyage.

It is inevitable that systems should become institutions, and the individual and collective efforts of Brits Abroad paved the way for the building of Empire. Skipping over nearly all the books relating to the British colonization of the Americas — exceptions are made for Kalm (no. 26), Speer (no. 27), Adair (no. 28) and Heriot (no. 32) — these books record British colonial efforts in Africa (nos. 31 and 39) and, most of all, in India (nos. 33, 34 and 38) and Asia (nos. 29, 30, 36 and 37). Particular stand-outs are Daniell’s Picturesque Voyage to India owned by a founding director of the French institute of Asian languages (no. 33), and an album of watercolors of the Pacific (no. 36) including four of Hawaii.

No. 36, Burney's album of Pacific watercolors (Pacific Coast Sketches)

Against the increasing institutionalization of exploration, Britons sought once again to carve their own personal routes through the world, whether far or near, for reasons outside commerce or empire: Tourism. Some were Grand Tourists — the manuscript atlas of coaching routes through Italy (no. 40) came, doubtless via a British traveler, to the Admiralty Office; Edward Lear’s painting of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice (no. 46) is transcendent — others traveled less glamorous routes, whether Wordsworth’s Athens and Attica (no. 44) or Stern’s Wanderings among the Falashas in Abyssinia (no. 45).

No. 46, Lear's watercolor of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice

Nearly all of the books in the list have some reflections on the natural history of the far-flung destinations they illustrate to the homebound public, but no collection of British exploration would be complete without a focus on Natural Science. The first name of that group must be Sir Hans Sloane, leading light of the Natural History Museum, the British Museum (and Library) and the Chelsea Physic Garden; his Voyage to the Islands (no. 47) is here present in a set richly annotated by an anonymous naturalist with first-hand experience of the Caribbean. Mark Catesby must have had Sloane’s Voyage in mind if not in hand when he traveled to the Americas to illuminate The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (no. 48, the Rendlesham-Fairhaven set in a Harleian binding) as well as the later and surpassingly rare Hortus Europæ Americanus (no. 51, ex-coll. Bill Reese).

No. 48, Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands

The category is surely crowned by John Gould’s Birds of Australia (no. 55), with 681 hand-colored lithographed plates that dazzled the British public and fueled their enduring grasp on a far larger island…

No. 55, Gould's Birds of Australia & Supplement

 

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