[DEFOE, Daniel (1661-1731)]

A New Voyage Round the World, by a Course Never Sailed Before

London: A. Bettesworth and W. Mears, 1725. 8vo. (8 x 4 5/8 inches). Two parts in one volume. [ii], 208; 205, [1] pp. Illustrated with 4 engraved plates, comprising an engraved frontispiece map of the globe by J. Clark and 3 full-page engraved views of scenes ashore.

Contemporary paneled calf, rebacked

Provenance: Bookplate of Thomas Fleming Jr.

First edition of one of Defoe’s major fictional travel narratives. An important work in Defoe’s later career, and an important early example of the fictional circumnavigation in English literature.

Framed as the journal of a group of merchants undertaking a circumnavigation by a course never sailed before, the work describes an imaginary trading and occasionally privateering voyage that ranges through the Atlantic and Southern oceans, with particular emphasis on uncharted regions of the South Pacific. Often described as perhaps Defoe's best travel book, it is among his most vivid depictions of a world bound together by commerce and of the potential profits of long-distance trade. Part of the sequence of pseudo-voyages and travel fictions Defoe produced in the wake of Robinson Crusoe, A New Voyage Round the World blends elements of adventure narrative, mercantile utopianism, and practical geography. The engraved plates, including the striking hemispheric world map, reinforce the book's claim to be a genuine voyage account, even as the narrative itself consistently pushes into the speculative and imaginary.

Moore 469; Hill 462; Sabin 19291; Spence II, 363; Furbank & Owens 221; ESTC T70641; Goldsmiths', 6348.

Item #42546

Price: $2,250.00