Sep 17, 2009 - Sale 2186

Sale 2186 - Lot 38

Price Realized: $ 13,200
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
(ARCTIC--ALASKA.) Delisle, Joseph Nicolas. Nouvelles Cartes des Decouvertes de l'Amiral de Fonte. 4 folding maps. [4], 60 pages. 4to, later 1/4 calf, worn, detached from text block; dampstained; inked stamp of John Carter Brown on verso of title page and his bookplate on front pastedown, with release stamp. Lacking, as usual, the final appendix on astronomical observations: pages 61-76 and the final plate. (JCB) Paris, 1753
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"No one interested in the beginnings of the delineation of the Alaska coast can pass over the imaginary cartography of that coast foisted on the world by Joseph Delisle and his brother-in-law, Buache, in their infatuation with the supposed discoveries of Admiral de Fonte. As is the case with his Explication, Delisle is absorbed here with that imaginary voyage and devotes much of the pamphlet to the subject. The maps are of special interest for their depiction of the Alaskan coast"--Streeter sale VI:3452.
Howes and Sabin describe this as a 60-page work, and Streeter's copy was also 60 pages. "Many copies end . . . following p. 60, inasmuch as the astronomical addenda has nothing to do with Delisle's work on the geography of the North Pacific"--Lada-Mocarski 7. Howes D244 ("b"); Sabin 35254. Not seen at auction since the 1969 Streeter sale.