The Journal of Joseph Banks in the Endeavour,

signed by HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

The full facsimile of Joseph Banks' manuscript journal during Captain Cook's first voyage, in which he sailed to Tahiti and on to Australia and New Zealand. It was this voyage which Britain used to stake claim to, and annex, Australia and New Zealand.

Banks, the official botanist and leader of a team of scientists and artists, used the voyage to produce an enormous scientific output. His journal is the first systematic record of planktonic animals, the first survey of oceanic birds, the first record of avian parasites of sea birds, the first detailed account of the sting of the Portuguese-Man-of-War, and the first to describe a kangaroo, with further natural history observations of all kinds and a comprehensive ethnographic survey. Banks, along with his colleagues Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander and Finnish naturalist Herman Spöring, compiled the first major collection of Australian flora, his Florilegium, describing some 1300 new species.

Anniversary edition, 1 of 500 copies (no. 75), signed by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh; 2 vols, 4to, (24 x 18 cm); signed by Prince Philip to final preface page, 2 mounted portrait frontispieces, 16 offset lithograph plates, 12 further in-text illustrations; original quarter calf, boards blind stamped with Joseph Banks' armorial and simple bookplates, spine in five gilt stamped compartments with gilt red morocco lettering piece, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, housed in original slip cases with printed title labels to upper board, protected in original simple dust jackets, a fine set.