Description
The first edition of An Account Of Six Years Residence In Hudson’s Bay by Joseph Robson, complete with two folding maps and a copper-engraved plate. One of the earliest accounts of life in the Hudson Bay Territory.
Octavo, [2pp ads], [2], vi, 84pp; 95pp, [1]. Three-quarter brown calf, marbled boards. New endpapers. Solid text block, clean throughout. This work is complete with three copper engraved fold-out plates, including: “A Draught of Nelson & Hayes’s Rivers” (Map I), “A Draught of Churchill River,” (Map II), and “Plans of York and Prince of Wales’s Fort” (Map III).
(Sabin 72259) (Hill, p. 257) (Graff 3532) (Field 1312) An attractive example of this early narrative on polar exploration.
From Hill: “…one of the earliest, and certainly the fullest, of works that had hitherto been published on the Hudson Bay Territory.”
Joseph Robson was an English surveyor and engineer who traveled to Hudson’s Bay in 1733, to construct the Prince of Wales Fort, on the banks of the Churchill River. Robson was employed by the Hudson Bay Company, but became critical of the company insular management and monopolistic activities. After returning to England, he wrote “An Account of Six Years Residence in Hudson’s-Bay” (1752), which accused the Company of neglecting imperial and commercial opportunities in the interior of North America. Though controversial, Robson’s account became an important contemporary source on early Hudson’s Bay Company practices, frontier life, and the strategic debates surrounding British expansion in northern Canada.
