First English Edition: 2 volumes bound together in 1, 368 + 354, (ii errata and directions to the book-binder), pages, copper engraved frontispiece in volume 1 - Prospect of the country at the Cape of Good Hope, 9 engraved plates, folding map and an additional hand coloured folding map bound in opposite page 1 in volume 1 - this is the map from Campbell's Travels in South Africa, London 1822. Bound in later full calf preserving the original title label on the spine, contents crisp and free of foxing, a very good copy.
Mendelssohn (Sidney) South African Bibliography, volume 2, pages 414 – 5, 'On his arrival at the Cape on January10, 1772, Sparrman had only the small sum of twenty-five rix dollars in his possession, but the kindness of his reception and the hospitality of the colonists enabled him to pursue his researches and his expenses on his short expeditions were defrayed by the Swedish East India Company. About the latter end of the year, the English Exploring Expedition under Captain Cook visited Table Bay, and Sparrman was invited to accompany it and he sailed in the Resolution on November 22, 1772. He did not return to South Africa until March 1775, when he determined to make an expedition into the interior with a friend named Immelman, and they made a start on July 25, the journey being extended to April, 1776. They penetrated through Kaffararia as far as "Bruntjes Hoogte," and the narrative of their travels is interesting and instructive, and is described by Mr Theal as the "most trustworthy account of the Cape Colony and the various races of people residing in it" that had been published in the eighteenth century. Sparrman died at Stockholm in 1820 at the age of 73; his work, originally written in Swedish, was translated and published in French, English and German and went through several editions.’
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Sparrman) 'Sparrman was the son of a clergyman. At the age of nine he enrolled at Uppsala University, beginning medical studies at fourteen and becoming one of the outstanding pupils of Linnaeus. In 1765 he went on a voyage to China as ship's doctor, returning two years later and describing the animals and plants he had encountered. On this voyage he met Carl Gustaf Ekeberg.
He sailed for the Cape of Good Hope in January 1772 to take up a post as a tutor. When James Cook arrived there later in the year at the start of his second voyage, Sparrman was taken on as assistant naturalist to Johann and Georg Forster. After the voyage he returned to Cape Town in July 1775 and practiced medicine, earning enough to finance a journey into the interior. He was guided by Daniel Ferdinand Immelman, the young frontiersman who had previously guided the Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg. Daniel and Sparrman reached the Great Fish River and returned in April 1776.
In 1776 Sparrman returned to Sweden, where he had been awarded an honorary doctorate in his absence. He was also elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1777. He was appointed keeper of the natural historical collections of the Academy of Sciences in 1780, Professor of natural history and pharmacology in 1781 and assessor of the Collegium Medicum in 1790. In 1790 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. In 1787 he took part in an expedition to West Africa, but this was not successful.
Sparrman published several works, the best known of which is his account of his travels in South Africa and with Cook, published in English as A voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, towards the Antarctic polar circle, and round the world: But chiefly into the country of the Hottentots and Caffres, from the year 1772 to 1776 (1789). He also published a Catalogue of the Museum Carlsonianum (1786–89), in which he described many of the specimens he had collected in South Africa and the South Pacific, some of which were new to science. He published an Ornithology of Sweden in 1806.
The asteroid 16646 Sparrman bears his name. The Swedish novelist Per Wästberg has written a biographical novel about Sparrman which was published in English in 2010, under the title as The Journey of Anders Sparrman. Anders Erikson Sparrman is denoted by the author abbreviation Sparrm. when citing a botanical name.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Sparrman)
- Overall Condition: Very good
- Size: 4to (275 x 220mm)
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