MACLEAN, Alistair. Captain Cook. (In fine binding)

Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1972. First U.S. edition. Tall octavo. pp. 192. Illustrated throughout with maps, colour plates and black-and-white photographs. Original blue publisher’s decorative leatherette binding, elaborately blocked in gilt with a maritime design to upper cover and spine, map endpapers. A near fine copy.

A handsome American first edition of Alistair MacLean’s uncommon non-fiction biography of the great eighteenth-century explorer Captain James Cook. Better known for thrillers such as The Guns of Navarone and Ice Station Zebra, MacLean regarded Cook as one of history’s greatest navigators and produced this engaging and well-illustrated account of his remarkable voyages across the Pacific. First published in 1972, the work traces Cook’s rise from humble origins in Yorkshire to his three great expeditions, documenting his charting of New Zealand, the eastern coast of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef, Antarctica, Polynesia and the elusive North-West Passage.

An attractive example in the publisher’s decorative binding, retaining the original bookplate of Robert Marceau to the front pastedown. Scarcer in this deluxe presentation than the standard trade binding and increasingly sought after by collectors of maritime exploration, Pacific history, and Alistair MacLean.

[L3 Bindings bookcase]