"A SOCIETY OF LITERARY GENTLEMEN OF LONDON"
The New London Magazine; being An Universal and Complete Monthly Repository of Knowledge, Instruction and Entertainment: For July, 1785. No. 1.
An unsophisticated copy of the first issue of The New London Magazine, in which Captain James Cook’s third and final voyage was serialised over the following eighteen months. The first part appears here, from pp.17-24. A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, undertaken by the Command of his Majesty, for making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere… was the official narrative of Cook’s last voyage, and was published in quarto in 1784. Most Londoners of modest means would have struggled to afford the cost of such a large and lavish publication, so this serialisation of the voyage would have made the account of Cook and his fellow captains available to a much wider audience. The actual text is a reproduction of George William Anderson’s abridgement, released in the same year as the official narrative, and published also by Alex Hogg (as is the present periodical). That was released as a folio in eighty separate parts.
Other contents includes Memoirs of William Pitt and James Fox, accounts of curious people or unusual customs including an “account of the courtship and marriages of the Natives of Kamtschatka … by a person who has resided among them”, book reviews, poetry and parliamentary proceedings. One of the plates is a folding cartoon of “Yorick at Dover, going to embark to France”.