20 - [ARCTIC] ROSS, John. Account of the Second Voyage in Search of a Northwest Passage.

[ARCTIC] ROSS, John. Account of the Second Voyage in Search of a Northwest Passage. First edition of the French translation of one of the most famous accounts of 19th-century polar exploration. Paris, Bellizard, Barthès, Dufour, and Lowell, 1835. 2 tomes in 2 in-8 volumes, each bound in red half-basane, smooth spine embellished with triple gilt fillets forming faux panels adorned with gilt fleurons, title and volume number labels with gilt lettering and numerals on black-dyed basane. LXI - [1] fol. and 456 pp., frontispiece portrait; [2] ff. and 544 pp., 1 fold-out map and 2 engravings as inserts. Normal wear and scuffing on the binding; lower corners of the first volume are worn; four small wormholes on the spines; mostly light foxing; a modestly restored tear on the map and minor cracks at the folds. First French edition, “translated under the author’s supervision” by A.-J.-B. Defauconpret. It is illustrated with a frontispiece portrait engraved by Robert Hart after the painting by Benjamin Rawlinson Faulkner. Privately funded by gin magnate Felix Booth, Sir John Ross’s second expedition aboard the Victory (1829–1833) remains legendary for having endured four consecutive winters, trapped by Arctic ice. It was during this scientific odyssey that his nephew, the young Lieutenant James Clark Ross, achieved the feat of precisely locating the magnetic North Pole on June 1, 1831. A fine copy, complete with the fold-out map and the two separate engravings, in a contemporary binding.