Nouveau voyage autour du monde. Où l'on décrit en particulier l'Isthme de l'Amerique, plusieurs Côtes & Isles des Indes Occidentales, les Isles du Cap Verd, le passage par la Terre del Fuego, les Côtes Meridionales du Chili, du Perou, & du Mexique; l'Isle de Guam, Mindanao, & des autres Philippines; les Isles Orientales qui sont près de Cambodie, de la Chine, Formosa, Luçon, Celebes, &c. la Nouvelle Hollande, les Isles de Sumatra, de Nicobar, de sainte Helene, & la Cap de Bonne-Esperance. Où l'on traite des differens Terroirs de tous ces Pays, de leurs Ports, des Plantes, des Fruits, & des Animaux qu'on y trouve : De leurs Habitans, de leurs Coûtumes, de leur Religion, de leur Gouvernement, de leur Négoce, &c

Rouen edition published by Jean-Baptiste Machuel le Jeune in 1715 for volumes I, III, IV and V. Volume II, entitled Suite du voyage autour du monde, avec un traité des vents qui regnent dans toute la zone torride, comes from the Amsterdam edition issued by the widow of Paul Marret and is dated 1711. Titles printed in red and black. The set is illustrated with 66 hors-texte plates and maps, most folding: 3 frontispieces, 39 plates and 24 maps. These include a world map, maps of islands and coastlines, coastal profiles, views of ports and islands, monuments, battle scenes, a shipwreck, and numerous representations of flora and fauna. Cf. Sabin, 18382; Borba de Moraes, I, 243-244; Leclerc, 416; Cordier, Bibl. Indosinica, 1459-1460; Boucher de La Richarderie, I, 121-122; Hoefer, XII, 881-885.

Contemporary full blond calf. Spines with five raised bands highlighted with gilt rules and richly decorated compartments, red morocco lettering-pieces and bronze or brown morocco numbering-pieces. Gilt rolls to headcaps, comb-marbled endleaves and pastedowns, gilt rules to board edges, red edges. Some restoration to the spines, which show slight differences in decoration, small areas of surface wear to a few boards, and two bumped corners. A handsome set.

William Dampier began his career among the buccaneers: from 1679 onwards, he sailed under Bartholomew Sharp, John Cook, Edward Davis and Charles Swan, crossed the Isthmus of Darién, called at the Galápagos and reached the Philippines before gradually gaining recognition as an explorer. In January 1688, he landed on the north-west coast of New Holland and became one of the first Englishmen to explore and describe part of the Australian continent. He would not return to England until 1691.

The success of his New Voyage Round the World, published in London in 1697, then transformed the buccaneer into a recognised explorer. The Admiralty entrusted him with command of the Roebuck for a new expedition to the South Seas; he again followed the western coast of Australia, reached New Guinea, recognised New Britain as distinct from it and discovered the passage that now bears his name, before the Roebuck was wrecked at Ascension Island. A few years later, Dampier sailed once more as pilot in Woodes Rogers’s expedition, during which Alexander Selkirk was found on Juan Fernández in 1709.

The five volumes, however, extend well beyond Dampier’s own accounts: alongside the Nouveau voyage, its Suite with the treatise on winds, tides and currents, the Supplément devoted in part to Achin, Tonkin and the Bay of Campêche, and the Voyage aux Terres australes, are the narratives of several companions and contemporaries from the same maritime world. Lionel Wafer, surgeon to the expedition, lived among the Kuna of Darién; Bartholomew Sharp commanded the South Sea campaign in which Dampier took part in 1680-1681; Ambrose Cowley produced the first detailed map of the Galápagos during the 1684 expedition; other accounts, including those of Wood and Robert, further extend the scope of the collection.

Gathered in five volumes and accompanied by 66 maps and plates, these narratives amount to far more than a simple edition of Dampier: together they reconstruct an entire world of routes, landfalls, battles and discoveries, that of the English buccaneers who became, almost despite themselves, some of the finest observers of the South Seas.