AN ARCTIC VOYAGE TO BAFFIN'S BAY AND LANCASTER SOUND, in Search of Friends with Sir John Franklin.

First edition, first issue. 8vo. Publisher's original slate-blue cloth with titles in gilt to the spine. Page edges untrimmed. Yellow endpapers. Eight pages of publisher's advertisements dated March 1850 in a smaller format bound in at the rear. Illustrated with a tinted lithographic frontispiece and a folding map, hand-coloured in outline. A very good copy, the binding firm with some chipping and minor restoration to the spine ends and a little wear to the joints and corners. The contents, with a touch of cracking in places, a couple of old ink numerals to the front pastedown, a little offsetting from the frontispiece to the title page and the occasional spot of light foxing, are otherwise in very good order throughout.

The first edition of the Scottish physician, writer and explorer Robert Goodsir's account of his voyage in search of his brother, Henry Goodsir, who had been appointed surgeon and naturalist on the doomed 1845 Sir John Franklin Expedition seeking the Northwest Passage. After the disappearance of Franklin and his men, Goodsir resolved to play an active role in locating his brother and the rest of the expedition, writing to Lady Jane Franklin to offer his services. Through her he was introduced to Captain William Penny, who hired him as surgeon on the whaler Advice for the 1849 Arctic season. Together with the whaler Truelove, the Advice formed part of a dual British Whaling and Franklin Search Expedition, which, although profitable for the Advice, was not successful in its search for Franklin, after having been forced to turn back by impacted ice in Lancaster Sound. In the present work, based upon his journal, Goodsir describes the expedition in great detail, providing vivid depictions of the region, the whaling process, the various dangers encountered, such as ice floes, icebergs, storms and shipwrecks, as well as the wildlife observed and interactions with the Inuit. One of the scarcer titles relating to the Franklin rescue efforts. (Sabin 27931; Arctic Bibliography 5919)