Flinders' Voyage to Terra Australis, 1814

Flinders, Matthew. A voyage to Terra Australis, undertaken for completing the discovery of that vast continent, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802 and 1803. London, 1814. Two volumes large quarto, with 9 steel-engraved views after William Westall, and elephant folio atlas with 11-double-page and 5 full-page charts, 2 double-page plates of coastal views and 10 botanical plates after Ferdinand Bauer, the text volumes in nineteenth-century half green morocco (a little rubbed), bound without half-titles, the atlas in half calf over contemporary boards retaining the gilt leather label on the front board. Some foxing on the plates in the text volumes as usual, stamp on verso of titles, some offsetting on the charts, also as usual, a little foxing. First edition, a very good set of the greatest Australian travel book, in its most desirable form, with the charts unfolded and all in the original Nicol issue of 1814. As well as recounting his epic circumnavigation of the continent, which finally established that it was a single landmass, Flinders provides a long introductory survey of earlier voyages in Australian waters, including Bligh's second voyage, in 1791, on which he served as a midshipman, his own expeditions to Bass Strait and Western Port with Bass, in 1795-97, and his 1803 voyages in the Porpoise, shipwrecked on the Barrier Reef, and the Cumberland. His meticulous charts remained in use for the rest of the century.