First edition of a famous voyage to South Africa, Indonesia, Japan, and Ceylon in the years 1770 to 1779, to collect botanical specimen. The work documents the author's botanical and zoological discoveries, of which many were new to science, and also contains "material of great ethnographical interest" (DSB).
The present work consists of four volumes, which were published between 1788-1793. The first contains an account of Thunberg's voyage to the Cape of Good Hope via Amsterdam and Paris, the second on his expeditions to the interior of South Africa, the third focuses entirely on Japan, with an extensive Japanese vocabulary, and the fourth discusses Japan, Java, and Ceylon, as well as Thunberg's return journey to Europe. The work was translated into German in 1792, in English in 1793, and French in 1794. It probably became so popular because, as Japan had been closed to foreigners for 150 years, little information about the country reached Europe. As the most recent travelogue on Japan was from 1729, Thunberg's account provided new knowledge for the first time in more than 60 years.
The edges and corners of the boards are somewhat scuffed, the spines and boards show signs of use, with tears at the head and foot of the spine, and some loss of material at the foot of the spine of volumes 1 and 2. The illustration on page 1 of volume 1 has been pasted onto the page, as usual, the edges of the leaves are (unevenly) browned, but the volumes are internally mostly clean, with repaired holes in the outer margins of some of the leaves at the start of volume 3, affecting a few letters of the dedication. Otherwise in good condition. Alt-Japan-Katalog 1506; Cordier, Japonica, col. 445; Landwehr, VOC, 339; Pritzel 9259; Stafleu & Cowan 14.357; cf. DSB XIII, pp. 391-393; Howgego, Exploration to 1800, T38; Mendelsohn II, pp. 499-500 (English ed.); Stafleu, Linnaeus and the Linnaeans, pp. 153-155.