Capt. Cook’s last voyage to the Pacific Ocean

[LANGLEY, Edward]. # 1291 London : Edwd. Langley, High Street, Borough, n.d. [1818 - 1820]. Copperplate engraving, 475 x 385 mm (paper), contemporary hand colouring, faint central original crease, browning to the extreme lower margin, an exceptional example, clean and crisp. Langley’s charming engraving is an early nineteenth century writing blank, an engraved decorative presentation page within which the schoolchild would compose a formal example of their penmanship. Much like its textile equivalent the sampler, the writing blank afforded an opportunity to showcase the child’s steady hand, and from the late seventeenth through to the mid-nineteenth century they were distributed throughout schoolhouses as well as sold by street criers and peddlers. This example is unused and affords the engraved vignettes (mostly after Webber) their full decorative expression. The scenes are captioned: Shooting of Sea Horses; Woman of Otaheita dancing; A Canoo of Oonalathka; A view of Kaye’s Island; Canoe of Sandwich Islands; Man of Sandwich Islands dancing; Killing of Penguins, and (the central vignette) The Death of Captain Cook at O-Why-Hee. The Langley engraving has been represented in both the Nan Kivell collection (National Library of Australia, Canberra, NK4950) and the Dixson Collection (Mitchell Library, Sydney) for nearly a century, yet accurate dating has eluded cataloguers, with a range of dates from as early as 1785 through to 1850 being attributed. We know from contemporary records that Langley occupied the premises at High Street Borough from 1805 - 1820, but the watermark of a fleur-de-lis along with the initials ‘J.M’ and the date 1818 clearly identity the production date of the paper, and thus narrows the publication date to within 1818 - 1820. Beddie 1860. Collections : National Library of Australia, Mitchell Library (State Library of New South Wales)