The Journals of Captain Cook

Captain Cook's Journals provide his own vivid first-hand account of three extraordinary expeditions. These charted the entire coast of New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, and brought back detailed descriptions of Tahiti, Tonga, and a host of until then unknown islands in the Pacific. The journals amply reveal the determination, courage and skill which enabled Cook to wrestle with the continuous dangers of uncharted seas and the problems of achieving a working relationship with the peoples whose unannounced guest he became.

This edition, abridged from the definitive four-volume collection published by the Hakluyt Society, makes Cook's inimitable personal account of his nine years of voyaging widely accessible for the first time. The selection preserves the spirit and rhythm of the full narrative, as well as Cook's idiosyncratic spelling. Philip Edwards gives an introduction to each voyage together with maps, a glossary of unusual words and indexes of people and places. A postscript offers a full assessment of the continuing controversies surrounding Cook's death.