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A couple of weeks back, John Cole asked-

| Is there a biography of LaPerouse in English?  As I recall there is a
| place named for him on Botany Bay right across from where Cook landed.

and I answered, in Navlist 3359

| ...Several works mentioning La Perouse in the title are accounts of those
| search expeditions, such as "Looking for La Perouse", by Frank Horner
| (Melbourne University Press, 1995)
|
| There are several works about La Perouse in French, but if John is looking
| for an English version he might search for-
| "Pacific Explorer, the life of Jean-Francois de La Perouse, 1741-88", by
| John Dunmore (the Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, New Zealand. 1985). As
a
| self-publication, it may not have achieved wide distribution, but it may
be
| worth exploring secondhand bookshops in New Zealand.
|
| In French, (Amiral) M R de Brossard has written "Le Voyage de La Perouse"
| (Paris 1965), and another having the same title, edited by Le Brossard and
| Dunmore, in 2 vols (Imprimerie Nationale, Paris, 1985).
|
| What are presumably original accounts surviving from the first part of the
| voyage are to be found in -
| Milet-Mireau N L A (ed.) "Voyage autour du monde ... de la Perouse", 3
vols,
| L'Imprimerie de la Republique, Paris 1797. How they found sufficient
| material from an expedition that failed to return, to occupy 3 volumes,
| eludes me; presumably he sent interim journals back to Paris during his
| travels. There's an abridged paperback of this, published by Maspero,
Paris,
| 1980.
|
| I should add that I have no acquaintance with any of these works, except
the
| book by Horner, from which these references were gleaned. I would not know
| about anything published since 1995, then.

====================

What I've just realised is that an important work was omitted from that list
above. It's "The Journal of Jean-Francais de Galaup de la Perouse", in two
volumes, edited by John Dunmore, and published by the Hakluyt Society in
1995. That was the same year as the Horner book, referred to above, which
explains why there wasn't a cross-reference in it. It's one of those
thoroughly-put-together jobs that Hakluyt does so well, with as much in
introductory  text, footnotes, and appendices as in the journal itself.

La Perouse had been making a thorough exploration of both East and West
coasts of the Pacific Ocean, and many of its islands, sending journals back
when he could, which is why his journals survived when he did not. His
journals were available for Milet-Mireau's editionin 1795, but had then
disappeared, only to be rediscovered, hidden within the French National
Archives, by a research student around 1980.

The crazy thing is that when I wrote that last posting, I had those two
Hakluyt volumes looking at me on my own shelves, and I hadn't recognised
their existence.

George.

contact George Huxtable at george@huxtable.u-net.com
or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.


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