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The Most Complete Collection of Exploration and Voyage Reports Obtainable - A Complete Library in Itself

Beautiful Uniformly Bound Set - In Contemporary Leather

With the Key Map and Western Overland Account by Hunt and Stuat

Approximately 100 maps and 150 Engravings

It would be difficult to imagine a more complete collection of the world's great travels and voyages of discovery.  The Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, likely the most comprehensive systematic effort to compile travels and voyages of discovery, is a vast collection of exploration reports from around the world, including a number of highly important accounts concerning the Pacific Northwest of America. The collection spans the entire globe, with emphasis on North America, the Pacific Ocean, Africa and Asia. The editors kept up with current events, incorporating new and often previously unpublished accounts. In an effort to balance out the collection and perhaps to provide historical context the editors also included a number of early discovery accounts, such as Marco Polo's overland travels to Asia. 

In addition to Hunt & Stuart's report and map (the first map to depict the Oregon Trail, some of the more famous reports include those from:

• Heinrich Julius Klaproth, a pioneering German linguist and orientalist, best known for his substantial contributions to the understanding of Asian languages and cultures.

• Alexander von Humboldt,  Prussian polymath, geographer, and naturalist, renowned for his extensive explorations and scientific studies in Latin America, particularly in the Amazon basin and the Andes.

• Philippe-Étienne Lafosse de la Renaudière, a French geographer, who significantly advanced the field of geography with his detailed studies and maps, particularly focusing on Europe.

• Auguste de Saint-Hilaire, a French botanist renowned for his extensive explorations and detailed documentation of Brazilian flora, significantly enriching the study of South American botany.

• Charles Athanase Walckenaer, a French geographer, historian, and naturalist, known for his contributions in cartography and studies of various regions, especially Europe and its historical geography.

• Adolphe Jules César Auguste Dureau de la Malle, a French scholar and geographer, notable for his insights into Roman geography and economy, with a particular focus on the ancient Mediterranean region.

• Louis Vivien de Saint-Martin, a French geographer and cartographer, who significant contributions to historical geography, particularly in relation to Asia, enhancing the understanding of its diverse regions.

Issued bi-monthly, the Nouvelles Annales reported on contemporary exploration around the globe on an expedited basis, as soon as contemporary accounts became available (and in some cases, such as the Hunt & Stuart Expedition, even before official reports).  The work is a monumental compendium of the travel accounts, including detailed descriptions of discoveries, encounters with indigenous peoples, and adventures. This book is an essential source for scholars, students of history and map enthusiasts. ow it.

Illustrated with approximately 100 maps, the present set of 115 volumes and a 1 volume index, represents a complete set of the Nouvelles Annales under the direction of noted Danish geographer Conrad Malte Brun, director of the project from 1819 to 1826, as well as 13 additional years, ending with volume 10 of the fifth series. The work's subtitle explains its greater purpose, as:

A collection of unpublished original relations, communicated by French and foreign travellers; new journeys, translated from all European languages; and historical memoirs on the origin, language, customs and arts of peoples, as well as on the production and trade of little or poorly known countries: accompanied by a bulletin announcing all the discoveries, research and undertakings which tend to accelerate the progress of the historical sciences, especially of geography.

According to Sabin the Annales would continue through 1870, eventually comprising 208 volumes in six series with some modifications to the title. Offered here is the most complete set we have seen, and especially desirable for being uniformly calf bindings and labels. 

Hunt and Stuart - First Detailed Publication of their Western Travels - with a Superlatively Important Map of the West.

Of all the great voyages found in these volumes, the outstanding exemplar is the first publication of the text and map relating to the overland adventures and travels in the Northwest by Wilson Price Hunt and Robert Stuart in 1811-1813. These two early western explorers set out to develop John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost at the mouth of the Columbia River and led the most important overland expeditions in the region immediately after Lewis and Clark. Herein is the primary relation of their journey spanning three years, beginning in New York, thence overland to Astoria and back to St. Louis, documenting the discovery of the South Pass and the establishment of the Oregon Trail. The Hunt portion of text was later published in English in The Overland Diary of Wilson Price Hunt, Oregon Book Society (1973). An English version of Stuart's account appeared in 1935, when The Discovery of the Oregon Trail, with a masterly foreword by Philip Ashton Rollins, was published. Tweney describes that book as second only to Lewis and Clark as an important source of overland travel and the history of the Pacific Northwest. Hunt's eastward and the Hunt-Stuart westward crossing made important in-roads into the Snake River valley, thus opening that territory to the fur trade. 

Between the map and the narratives of the birth of the Oregon Trail, these volumes embrace a tremendous leap forward in opening the American West.

Wheat refers to the map as:

The first map of importance to appear in 1821... It was published in Nouvelles Annales des Voyages... and purports to show the routes of Wilson Price Hunt (westward) and Robert Stuart (eastward) a decade earlier. The map is well constructed, and has been praised as a remarkably accurate representation of their journeyings. It seems to have been largely based on the Lewis and Clark map of 1814, but in its new elements it was a notable performance... Lapie's rendition of the Snake and its tributaries was a notable advance over any map that had yet been constructed...The character of the information displayed is such that the map could not have been constructed from purely literary sources. Lapie must have had an original sketch map from Astor or Gallatin (Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to France) to work from. This is all the more remarkable since no map has yet been uncovered in the United States, and we are thus indebted to the Frenchman for a major contribution to our geography.

Wagner-Camp describes the context and background of the map:

In accordance with John Jacob Astor's plan for the establishment of an American fur trade in the Far West, two groups set out from New York for the mouth of the Columbia River: one group sailing in the ship Tonquin, numbering among its members Robert Stuart; and the other, headed by Wilson Price Hunt, proceeding overland via Saint Louis and the Missouri River to the same destination. The two parties joined at the new post Astoria in the early part of 1812; and in June of that year Stuart and Hunt returned to Saint Louis with a small party. Their arrival was noted in the contemporary press ... However detailed accounts did not appear in print until 1821 [herein:] Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, Tome X, pp. 31-88; Tome X, pp. 88-119; and Tome XII, pp. 21-113]. 

From the Hill Catalog of Pacific Voyages at the University of California, San Diego (describing the 1935 publication of Stuart's account):

[Stuart] was tapped by a major rival company [of his erstwhile employer, the North West Company] in the fur trade, John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company, to become a partner and expedition leader. Astor wanted to establish a fortified trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River, and so in the fall of 1810 he sent one group of employees, including Stuart, by the sea route around the Horn to the Pacific to establish this post. He also sent another group westward overland, led by Wilson Price Hunt, to establish a route and scout sites for trading posts along the way ... Stuart and his party followed the route of Lewis and Clark out of Oregon, and then followed their colleague Hunt's trail into Idaho. Part way into Idaho, Stuart branched out in a new direction, following Indian trails into Wyoming, up South Pass, along the Sweetwater River, by the Red Buttes and into the upper canyon of the North Platte in Nebraska, before joining the fur-traders' highway along the Platte... This route, with only small variations, became the trail to the Pacific Northwest and California that bore the wagon tracks of so many emigrant trains in the 1840s and 1850s. 

Volume 10:

Pages [5]-31: Voyage de l'Embouchure de la Columbia a Saint-Louis, sur le Mississipi, en 1812; Précédé d'un Voyage par mer de New-York à l'embouchure de la Columbia; de la relation de ce qui s'est passé au fort Astoria pendant plus d'un an (de 1811 à 1812), et d'un Voyage de Saint-Louis au fort Astoria; Traduits et extraits des journaux manuscrits tenus par les voyageurs, en anglois.

Pages 31-88: Voyage de M. Hunt et de ses compagnons de Saint-Louis à l'embouchure de la Columbia par une nouvelle route à travers les Rocky-Mountains.

Pages 88-119: Voyage de l'Embouchure de la Columbia à Saint-Louis, sur le Mississipi, par M. R. Stuart.

Volume 12:

Pages 21-113: Voyage de l'Embouchure de la Columbia à Saint-Louis, sur le Mississipi, par M. R. Stuart.

Volume 12 contains the important map by Lapie illustrating their explorations and the discovery of what would become the Oregon Trail:

Carte de la Partie Occidentale des États-Unis, Dressée pour servir à l'intelligence des découvertes des Américains dans cette partie et notamment pour celles de M.M. Hunt et Stuart, faites en 1811,12, et 13. 15 3/4 x 9 1/2 inches. Lapie's handsome engraved map shows the northwestern United States and most of the region north of San Francisco and west of the Mississippi.

Malte-Brun and the Annales des Voyages

The Danish journalist and scientist Conrad Malte-Brun emigrated to France in 1799. Through his multiple ambitious publishing endeavors, including the present Nouvelles Annales des Voyages (which began life as the Annales de Voyages in 1807, with the new title Nouvelles Annales des Voyages first appearing in 1819), he intended to establish a solid foundation for what he envisioned as a distinct geographical science. His ideas on geography as a science are of interest to modern day historians of geography and cartography.

The present extensive serial publication played a key role in Malte-Brun's vision for geography as a field of inquiry deserving of the respect enjoyed by the physical sciences. By presenting an ongoing collection of accounts of travel and exploration, well illustrated with fine maps, Malte-Brun emphasized the literary treatment of geographical travel accounts (with illustrative maps), with less focus on a systematic analysis of geography based on field work. This might have been seen as a stumbling block to his overall ambitions for geography's status as a scientific discipline. His other major publication, the Précis de la Geographie Universelle (1810, 6 volumes), was envisioned as an encyclopedic sum of all geographical knowledge.