A voyage round the world / George Forster ; edited by Nicholas Thomas and Oliver Berghof ; assisted by Jennifer Newell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Forster, Georg, 1754-1794.

Contributor:

Thomas, Nicholas, 1960-

Berghof, Oliver.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Voyages around the world.

Cook, James, 1728-1779.

Cook, James.

Oceania--Discovery and exploration.

Oceania.

Discoveries in geography.

Physical Description:

2 volumes : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Honolulu : University of Hawaiʻi Press, [2000]

Summary:

George Forster's A Voyage Round the World presents a wealth of geographic, scientific, and ethnographic knowledge uncovered by Cook's second journey of exploration in the Pacific (1772-1775). Accompanying his father on the voyage, ship's naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster, George proved a knowledgeable and adept observer. The lively, elegant prose and critical detail of his account, based loosely on his father's journal, make it one of the finest works of eighteenth-century travel literature and all account of prime importance in the history of European contact with Pacific peoples.

In its author's German translation, this work became a classic of natural history writing, but its original English version has long been neglected by anglophone scholars. This new scholarly edition makes this important book readily available for the first time since its initial publication more than two centuries ago. But it also presents the work in fresh terms, making it more accessible and relevant to a contemporary audience. The valuable introduction and annotations draw on the wide range of anthropological and ethnohistorical scholarship published since the 1960s and contextualize the book in relation to both the cultures of Oceania documented by the Forsters and the history of European voyaging in the Pacific. Appendixes include a translation of the introduction to the German edition and the polemical pamphlets by George Forster and the ship's astronomer William Wales, in which some of the book's more controversial claims were debated.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0824820916

OCLC:

40738952