Cook led three famous expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. In voyages that ranged from the Antarctic circle to the Arctic Sea, Cook charted Australia and the whole coast of New Zealand, and brought back detailed descriptions of the natural history of the Pacific. Accounts based on Cook's journals were issued at the time, but it was not until this century that the original journals were published in Beaglehole's definitive edition. "The Journals" tells the story of these voyages as Cook wanted it to be told, radiating the ambition, courage and skill which enabled him to carry out an unrivalled series of expeditions in dangerous waters. About the Author Captain James Cook (1728-79) was born in Yorkshire and after an apprenticeship at a shipowners, joined the navy in 1755. Philip Edwards (now retired) has been a professor of English Literature at Trinity College, Dublin, and the universities of Liverpool and Essex. He has written widely on Shakespeare and on the literature of voyages. From The Publisher: Captain Cook's Journals provide his vivid first-hand account of three extraordinary expeditions between 1768 and 1779. These charted the entire coast of New ZeaLand and the east coast of Australia and brought back detailed descriptions of Tahiti, Tonga, and a host of previously unknown islands in the Pacific including the Hawaiian Islands. The journals amply reveal the determination, courage, and skill that enabled Cook to wrestle with the continuous dangers of uncharted seas and the problems of achieving a relationship with the peoples whose unannounced guest he became. This edition, abridged from the definitive four-volume Hakluyt Society edition, makes Cook's inimitable personal account of his years of voyaging widely accessible for the first time and includes an Introduction to each voyage, a Glossary of unusual words, indexes of people and places, and a Postscript assessing the controversy surrounding Cook's death. |
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