Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan Performed in the Years 1852,1853, and 1854 Under the Comand of Commodore M. C. Perry, United States Navy (3 volumes)

Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan Performed in the Years 1852,1853, and 1854 Under the Comand of Commodore M. C. Perry, United States Navy (3 volumes)

Hawks, Francis L. And Perry, Commodore M. C.

Washington : Beverley Tucker, 1856


[Includes suppressed, nude "Public Bath at Simoda" plate] 3 volume set. 1st ed., Senate issue. Washington : Beverley Tucker, 1856. Bound in publisher's blindstamped cloth. Rebacked, with restored spines. Spines lettered in gold.  Quartos, 29 x 22 cm.  Collated: Vol. 1: xvii, [1], 537 pp. (illustrated with 88 plates, 2 folding plates, 4 maps, and 2 folding maps.) Tears at folds of maps. Vol. 2: [6], 414, [16], (illustrated with 26 plates, 15 chart plates, and 12 folding map). Vol. 3: viii pp.; xliii, 705 pp. (Numerous woodcut star charts).  "In January 1852 [Perry] was selected to undertake the most important diplomatic mission ever entrusted to an American naval officer, the negotiation of a treaty with Japan, a country at this time sealed against intercourse with the Occidental powers" (DAB). By March 31, 1854, the treaty granting the U.S. trading rights had been signed by the Japanese. Upon his return to the U.S., his chief duty for the following year was to compile his reports of the expedition, aided by Francis Hawks. The first volume has the account of the voyage and lithographs of the travel; the second volume has the natural history reports by D.S. Green and others and includes hand-colored plates of Japanese fishes and shells. In addition to the artist W. Heine, from whose drawings a great number of the lithographs were made, the daguerreotypist E. Brown, Jr., went on the expedition, taking what were undoubtedly the earliest photographic images of Japan, many of them reproduced lithographically in this work.  

Refs:  Hill 230-231; Sabin 30968.  

Provenance: Bookplates of G. Phillip Wardner and Mary R. Wardner. George Phillip Wardner (Harvard, summa cum laude, class of 1890; Harvard Law, LL B., 1893) was a noted attorney, admitted to the Bar of the US Supreme Court.  His wife was the granddaughter of U.S. Senator Luke B. Poland of Vermont.

  • Product Code: 1908190068
  • Availability: In Stock
  • $1,495.00
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Tags: Set, First Edition, Plates, Art, Asian History