American Marine's Journal of Voyages with Captain Cook to Auction

Bonhams Skinner will close out October with a sale which features important works of Americana, rare books and manuscripts.

The first work to be protected by copyright in the United States – A Journal of Captain Cook's last voyage to the Pacific Ocean, and in quest of a North-West Passage, between Asia & America, 1783 by John Ledyard (1751-1789) – will be presented at the Fine Books & Manuscripts sale on October 31. 

Captain James Cook was a British explorer best known for his three voyages in the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779 and Ledyard, a native of Connecticut who served as a Royal Marine on board the HMS Resolution, was in the boat that took Cook ashore on the day he was killed in Hawaii in 1779. This book chronicles his journey with Captain Cook and is the first by an American to depict Hawaii and the Northwest Coast. Estimated at $50,000–75,000, this first edition is extremely rare as it still has its map fully intact. 
  
An additional highlight is a German edition from 1493 of the Nuremberg Chronicle by Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514), estimated at $50,000–75,000. The Nuremberg Chronicle is an illustrated history of the world, celebrated as one of the most technically advanced works of early printing, and only 300 of the German edition are believed to have survived to the present. 

Also of note in the sale are four John James Audubon (1785-1851) plates highlighted by Brown Pelican (Pelicanus Fuscus), 1838, estimated at $30,000 – 50,000, as well as a first edition of Audubon’s The Birds of America, from Drawings Made in the United States and their Territories, 1880-84, estimated at $25,000–35,000.

The department will also present an online sale October 22 – November 1 which will feature a complete set of Mark Twain novels including a letter signed by Twain, estimated at $8,000 – 12,000.