Case 11 - Cook’s First Voyage 3

John Hawkesworth. An Account of the Voyages Undertaken … for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere … Vol II. London: Printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1773.

John Hawkesworth. An Account of the Voyages Undertaken … for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere … Vol II. London: Printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1773.

The official three-volume account of the voyages of discovery to the Southern Hemisphere was written by John Hawkesworth (1715–73), who earned £6000 for the sale of the copyright. The work was a bestseller, but Hawkesworth died soon after his volumes were published, and it was thought that criticism the work received - for its frank descriptions of the social relations of the Tahitians and for his loose adaptation of the voyagers’ journals - contributed to his demise.

The first volume contains accounts edited by Hawkesworth of the voyages of Byron, Wallis and Carteret, with the remaining volumes dedicated wholly to Cook’s first voyage. This second edition differs from the first in that it contains a Preface in which Hawkesworth replies to charges made against him by his most uncompromising critic, Scottish geographer and hydrographer Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808). The second volume is open at Cook’s chart of Cook Strait.

John Hawkesworth. An Account of the Voyages Undertaken … for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere … Vol II. London: Printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1773.

John Hawkesworth. An Account of the Voyages Undertaken … for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere … Vol II. London: Printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1773.
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