An Account Of The Mutinous Seizure Of The Bounty, With The Succeeding Hardships Of The Crew. To which are added, Secret Anecdotes of the Otaheitean Females. London: Printed for Bentley and Co. No. 22, Fette Lane; and sold by H.D. Symonds, Paternoster Row. It has an engraved frontis titled “The Pirates seizing Captn. Bligh”, with References To The Principal Incidents following the title page, text pages running from B [page 9] to 69, followed by seven pages for a chapter titled “Secrete Anecdotes Of The Otaheitean Females”.
The book is 3/4 bound with a gilt title on the spine, two raised bands, pebbled marbled boards, with blank endpapers and a pencilled note on the front paste-down which reads “Maggs Bros. London £14 - 10 - 0 1936, note engraved plate of the Pirates seizing Capt. Bligh, Small 8 Vo. half calf @ 1800”, with the bookplate of Francis Stanton Blake on the front paste-down. There are inked notes from a quill pen in the margins of the last chapter, the notes are about [Edmund] Burke and the morality of sex, with references to King David and Herod, and the notes are dated May 24, 1823.
The crew actually mutinied and seized the Bounty in 1789 - it was real story - and this anonymous narrative about the open boat voyage endured by Captain Bligh was taken from the original first edition of 1790 and the third edition of 1792. Both editions are extremely rare, and apparently the third edition is not even listed among the holdings of the British Library. This copy was likely printed between 1790 and 1792, and may well be a first edition of the Bentley printing.
This rare narrative is a small 8vo. and measures 7 5/8 x 5 in. wide and has light browning or foxing here and there.
We’ve only seen two copies sold at auction in the last twenty years - one sold for
£5019 at Christie’s in 2004 and the other sold for £7563 at Bonhams in 2020, and this would be a wonderful addition to any collector who is looking for Bounty.