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Abstract
There are hundreds of impressions of engravings relating to the person, life and voyages of Captain Cook in collections around the world. Many, however, are disassociated from the original contexts of their publication and are thus of limited historical use. Beginning with a single, radically trimmed impression in the Ashmolean Museum, a detailed account is provided of one particular engraving. It is shown that it was originally published as a frontispiece to a volume of the Universal Magazine, whose previously overlooked role in the dissemination of knowledge about Cook’s voyages is then demonstrated. Accounts are provided of the specific context in which the engraving was published and the specific meaning it was intended to convey.
Acknowledgements
This article draws on research carried out while I was the holder of a Major Research Fellowship (2017–2019) from The Leverhulme Trust for the project ‘Oxford’s Cook-Voyage Collections in Historiographical Perspective’ (MRF–2016–064). I am grateful to the archivists, curators and librarians who made material available to me physically and/or virtually, especially Alice B. Millea for providing me with access to material relating to the Hope Collection in the Oxford University Archives, and Caroline Palmer for providing me with access to the Ashmolean’s collection of engraved portraits of Captain Cook. I am also grateful to Sophie Forgan, Colin Harrison, Steve Hooper, Derek McDonnell and the anonymous referee for comments and suggestions.
Notes
1 For examples of useful essays in the field, however, see Smith, ‘Cook’s Posthumous Reputation’; Williams, The Death of Captain Cook; Scobie, ‘The Many Deaths of Captain Cook’; Scobie, Celebrity Culture and the Myth of Oceania in Britain.
2 Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford (hereafter AM): WAHP33887.
3 The history of the other impression fixed to the sheet (AM: WAHP33888), one of many representations of Cook’s death to be published, has yet to be identified.
4 The formal Deed of Gift was dated 4 August 1849 (University of Oxford, University Archives, WPa/40/1), and the Gift formally accepted by the University on 14 May 1850 (University of Oxford, University Archives, Register of Convocation, 1846–1854, NEP/subtus.Reg Bt); see Smith, Hope Entomological Collections.
5 Foote, ‘Hope, Frederick William’; Sharp, Portrait Prints from the Hope Collection.
6 Database entry for AM: WAHP33887, accessed 4 February 2023, via https://collections.ashmolean.org/object/197830.
7 Unsurprisingly, the engraving is not included in the entries devoted to Cook in the standard works on engraved British portraits; see, for example, Bromley, Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits, 377–378; O’Donoghue, Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits, vol. 1, 481–482.
8 See, especially, Bennett, Thomas Stothard.
9 Sullivan, ‘Stothard, Thomas (1755–1834)’. Many years later, in 1806, Stothard was appointed to a committee set up to advise the Lords of the Treasury on the proper places for monuments of Cook, Nelson, Pitt and others in St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey; Bennett, Thomas Stothard, 40.
10 Hervey, The Naval History of Great Britain, vol. 5, facing 464; see Coxhead, Thomas Stothard, 168; see also Bennett, 63–64.
11 Kippis, A Narrative of the Voyages round the World Performed by Captain James Cook (1820); see Coxhead, Thomas Stothard, 209, see also Bennett, Thomas Stothard, 82 (though Kippis’s name is given here as ‘Ripps’).
12 State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (hereafter SLNSW): SSV*/Cook/2; see Beddie, Bibliography, 182–83 (no. 965); see also Leeson and Barrington (eds), Bibliography, 38.
13 See, for example, Kippis, A Narrative of the Voyages round the World Performed by Captain James Cook (1839 edn).
14 Coxhead, Thomas Stothard, 178.
15 Alexander, A Biographical Dictionary, 232.
16 Cook and King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1st edn, 1784), vol. 3, pl. 66 (to face 139).
17 Ibid., pl. 67 (to face 151).
18 Cook and King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (abridged edn; 1785–1786), vol. 1, frontispiece; vol. 3, facing 199. Coincidentally, Thomas Cook’s original drawing for that portrait is in the collections of the Ashmolean Museum and, indeed, was previously affixed to the other side of the card on which the impression discussed here is fixed; Coote, ‘An “Original Drawing” of Captain Cook’, unpublished MSS.
19 British Museum (hereafter BM): 1849,0721.714, 1852,1116.424.
20 SLNSW: DL Pd 674, DL Pd 675.
21 SLNSW: SAFE/Q78/8.
22 National Library of Australia (hereafter NLA): S3532, U3040, U3108.
23 Australian National Maritime Museum (hereafter ANMM): 00017859.
24 National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa (hereafter NLNZ): A-451-013.
25 The bookseller’s listing continued to be available online, accessed 4 February 2023, https://www.antipodean.com/pages/books/1020/james-cook/a-collection-of-early-portraits-of-capt-cook-and-representations-of-the-famous-death-of-cook> (see no. 31).
26 Hordern House, Australia in the Eighteenth Century, [unpaginated] (no. 38).
27 Hordern House, ‘Common Friends to Mankind . . .’, 57 (no. 64).
28 BM: 1849,0721.714.
29 NLA: U3108.
30 Leeson and Barrington (eds), Bibliography of Captain James Cook, 109.
31 Beddie, Bibliography of Captain James Cook, 488 (nos 2676–2678).
32 Two of the impressions in the National Library of Australia are from his collection; NLA: U3040, U3108 (Nan Kivell Collection NK1628).
33 Nan Kivell and Spence, Portraits of the Famous and Infamous, 79; see also Nan Kivell, Portraits of People Connected with Australia, 54.
34 Database entries for BM 1849,0721.714 and 1852,1116.424, accessed 4 February 2023, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1849-0721-714, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1852-1116-424.
35 Database entry for ANMM 00017859, accessed 4 February 2023, https://collections.sea.museum/en/objects/details/31573/.
36 Database entry for NLA S3532, U3040 and U3108, accessed 4 February 2023, https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2102627.
37 Database entry for NLNZ A-451-013, accessed 4 February 2023, https://natlib.govt.nz/records/30659174.
38 Database entries for SLNSW DL Pd 674 and DL Pd 675, accessed 4 February 2023, https://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110339831, http://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110339844.
39 Bookseller’s listing as per note 25.
40 Hordern House, Australia in the Eighteenth Century, [unpaginated] (no. 38); Hordern House, ‘Common Friends to Mankind . . .’, 57 (no. 64).
41 Anonymous, ‘The Centenary of the Discovery of New South Wales’. The reprint was posted on the website of The Institute of Australian Culture on 5 March 2015, accessed 4 February 2023, http://www.australianculture.org/the-centenary-of-the-discovery-of-new-south-wales-1870/.
42 Timperley, Encyclopaedia of Literary and Typographical Anecdote, 675.
43 Alexander, ‘“Alone Worth Treble the Price”’, 112.
44 Ibid.
45 Greenhalgh, ‘Universal Magazine, The’, 337.
46 Schimmelman, ‘Art in the Early English Magazine, 1731–1800’.
47 Timperley, Encyclopaedia of Literary and Typographical Anecdote, 795.
48 Greenhalgh, ‘Universal Magazine, The’, 338-9.
49 Alexander, ‘“Alone Worth Treble the Price”’, 113.
50 Ibid., 110. Greenhalgh calls them ‘excellent’; Greenhalgh, ‘Universal Magazine, The’, 337.
51 Very few of the articles detailed here were known to Leeson and Barrington in 1928 or to Beddie in 1970 and thus most are not included in their Cook bibliographies; nor are they listed in volume one of David W. Forbes’s important Hawaiian National Bibliography. Nor, for example, is the Universal Magazine included amongst the 64 newspapers and periodicals cited by Scobie in her recent book; Scobie, Celebrity Culture.
52 Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages; see ‘Some Account of a Work, just published, by John Hawkesworth . . .’; Universal Magazine, 52 (1773), 304–10.
53 Universal Magazine, 52 (1773), 366–72; 53 (1773), 33–39, 72–8, 113–19, 179–85, 233–39, 290–96, 345–49; 54 (1774), 13–17.
54 For a critique of the latter, see Anderson, Elegant Engravings of the Pacific, [unpaginated].
55 Universal Magazine, 59 (1776), 330.
56 Cook, ‘The Method Taken’; Universal Magazine, 60 (1777), 128–9.
57 Universal Magazine, 60 (1777), 266–7.
58 Ibid., 316–18.
59 Ibid., 358–9.
60 Universal Magazine, 66 (1780), 51.
61 Universal Magazine, 68 (1781), 281–85.
62 As with the engraving that is the focus of this article, there are uncontextualized impressions of this anonymous engraving in collections around the world; see, e.g.: SLNSW V*/Cook/31B, DL Pd 625; NLA: S6543, S6663, U3037, U3039; NLNZ: A-451-0004.
63 SLNSW: PXD 59/Vol.02/p.F.1.
64 Ruth Scobie describes it as ‘a crudely engraved version of what appears to be Webber’s work-in-progress’; Scobie, ‘The Many Deaths of Captain Cook’, 129. For a useful discussion, see the entry for an example offered for sale by Hordern House, accessed 4 February 2023, https://www.hordern.com/pages/books/3003085/cook-death-john-webber-after/representation-of-the-death-of-capt-cook.
65 That is, extracts from Cook and King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1st edn, 1784).
66 Universal Magazine, 74 (1784), 292–97, 357–63; 75 (1784), 17–25, 57–72, 113–24 [misnumbered 313–24], 169–80, 255–31, 281–83; 76 (1785), 17–21, 57–60, 113–18, 169–76, 225–31, 281–90, 343–49.
67 Universal Magazine, 75 (1784), 33–40, 80–88.
68 Presumably the ‘minor line engraver’ James Tookey (1755-1823); Alexander, A Biographical Dictionary, 914. For decontextualized loose impressions in institutional collections, see, e.g.: SLNSW: DL Pd 573 (handcoloured), DL Pd 646 (handcoloured), DL Pd 647, DL Pd 648 (handcoloured), PXA 1003/19; NLA: S1098, S1099, S3509, S6545; NLNZ: A-218-007; the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich: PAD2898; the Scottish National Portrait Gallery: UP C 435; the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne: 1973.0633.000.000.
69 Cook, A Voyage towards the South Pole, vol. 1, frontispiece. It has been widely assumed that the painting on which Basire’s engraving is based is the ‘long-lost’ portrait ascribed to Hodges that was acquired by the National Maritime Museum in 1987 (BHC4227). There are, however, significant differences between the original painting and Basire’s engraving (and thus Tookey’s), so it seems quite likely that there was once another portrait by Hodges that is now lost.
70 Universal Magazine, 75 (1784), 337–42.
71 David, The Charts & Coastal Views of Captain Cook’s Voyages, vol. 3, 118 (no. 3.95C).
72 Universal Magazine, 75 (1784), 332.
73 Universal Magazine, 73 (July 1783). None of the other frontispieces to volumes of the Universal Magazine published around this time appears to be Stothard’s work. ‘T. Cook’, however, is credited with engraving at least two other frontispieces, to volume 75 (July 1784) and volume 77 (July 1785).
74 Universal Magazine, 76 (1785), 1–2.
75 Ibid., 3–4.
76 For a general assessment, see Anderson, Elegant Engravings of the Pacific [unpaginated].
77 Williams, ‘“As befits our age, there are no more heroes”’, 233. Although first published in 1782, the poem was written between late June and 12 July 1781; see Baird and Ryskamp, ‘Commentary’, 532.
78 Hammelmann, Book Illustrators, 68-71.
79 Coxhead, Thomas Stothard, R.A., 41-42.
80 Bennett, Thomas Stothard, 72–3.
81 Ibid., 100
82 Ibid., 28.
83 Ibid., 35.
84 BM: 1849,0721.714.
85 NLA: U3108.
86 Smith, ‘Cook’s Posthumous Reputation’, 173 (figure 12). For Mavor’s biography of Cook, see Mavor, The British Nepos, pp. 420–28.
87 Yeo, Encyclopaedic Visions, 234–6, fig. 27.
88 See, e.g., Smith, ‘Cook’s Posthumous Reputation’, 170–172 (figures 7–11), 177 (figure 14).
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Jeremy Coote
Jeremy Coote is a retired museum curator using his new-found freedom to pursue long-standing interests in the history of early institutional collections from Africa and the Pacific, and in particular in the material legacies of the voyages of Captain James Cook (1728–79). He is an associate editor of the Journal of the History of Collections and a member of the Society for Nautical Research.