Histoire des navigations aux Terres Australes.

Paris. Durand. 1756.

Rare, with the seven additional sheets in the first volume, pages 437* to 451*. Quarto major (30 x 22.5 cm / 11.81 x 8.85 in), complete work in two volumes. Tome premier: Cover, XIV pp., 463 pp., 4 pp. Tome second: Cover, 1 sheet, 514 pp. Publisher's binding with Moroccan leather spine, ribs, rosettes, fillets and gold titles. Very good copy, with 6 sheets from the first volume with an old water mark. Sabin, 8388. The second edition, published in the same year, included seven maps. First edition.

Brosses (1709 - 1790) brings together in this capital work, one of the most important, the first explorations of the South Pacific, with the discoveries of the Dutch in Australia, being the first to establish a geographical division of Australia and Polynesia. It includes among others, the expeditions of Magellan, Drake, Schouten and Tasman. He undertook this task at the request of his friend Buffon, and for his great contributions, Charles de Brosses was one of the most prominent figures of the time.

The publication of his work "Histoire des navigations aux Terres Australes", indicating the need to establish an intermediate point between the known world and the Austral Land, it is claimed, aroused interest in the Malvinas Islands in Bouganville. (1)

Notes:

1. Carolina Martínez: Revelations of a French manuscript on the Malvinas Islands (...) In Corpus. Virtual Archives of the American Highland, Vol. 7. No 2/2017.