China missionary provenance. 1821 Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage..., William Parry. 2nd edition. All maps and plates.

Complete with all maps and plates, 1821 edition of Parry's "Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific", with the fascinating provenance of a missionary in Singapore, Jas. (James) T. (Taylor) Dickinson, from 1835-1844.

This is the second edition of Parry's work, with the same pagination/plates/maps as the first, but catalogues note several corrections to the first editions text. The first was also issued in 1821.

In 1819, Captain William Edward Parry led a British naval expedition to find a North-West Passage. They sailed further west than any previous European voyage, crossing 110 degrees West longitude, a specific milestone that earned the crew a 5,000 pound government cash prize. As planned, they then anchored off Melville Island and intentionally spent the winter frozen in the ice. To maintain health and morale during the long, dark months, Parry kept the men busy with routine duties, physical exercise, stage plays, and a shipboard newspaper. When the ice broke up the following summer, they tried to continue their journey but were stopped by solid ice fields. The expedition then safely returned to England. This published journal serves as the official record of their daily activities, route, and scientific observations.

Provenance -

James Taylor Dickinson signed the back of what was the frontis (before a binding restoration), noting his location in "Singapore". Dickinson was a missionary to China from 1835 to 1844 and a noted bibliophile. Dickinson, at his death, donated much of his collection to Yale, his alumni (see Guide to the James Taylor Dickinson Papers, Yale, 1983).

Bibliographic Details -

Worldcat OCLC catalogue number 1554450052

Physical Attributes -

Measures approx. 28 x 21.5 x 4.5 cm. 4to (quarto). Leather spine with marbled paper covered hardcover boards. Spine with five raised bands; four compartments with blind central tool, two compartments with gilt on red morocco title and author, and year in gilt at base of spine. Illustrated with plates. Fold-out maps.

Pages - xxix, [3], 310, [2 - leaf "APPENDIX"], clxxix, [1 - blank], one leaf of advertisements

Condition -

See pictures. Fresh strong binding. A few light rubs to leather, slightest wear to edges. "$1150" written on flyleaf in graphite. Some toning, occasional thumbing and foxing throughout text block. Title page has ghost of frontis that was used in previous binding (rebound into the correct position with rebinding). Some of the plates look like they developed a moisture mark that is not reflected in the text block, but there is an occasional moisture mark from the bottom edge throughout the text block. Some dog-eared pages.

On the contents page, one plate has the word "frontis" written next to it. On the back of the plate that was formerly the frontis, but not rebound in place (page 96) the former owner wrote his name, "Jas.T. Dickinson, Singapore", which would have been at the front of the book. Map at 271 folded badly at edges and has tears that were repaired with cellophane. (Baffins Bay).