What Does “Original Condition” Mean? Collectors and historians often ask what “original condition” truly means when it comes to rare books. The answer varies widely depending on the time, place, and method of publication. One particularly striking example is Canon Guillaume Baston’s four-volume fantasy about Omai, the famous Tahitian who traveled to England on Captain Cook’s second voyage. Baston’s work,…

A Surprising Literary Discovery While Matthew Flinders is widely credited with being the first to use the name Australia in print in his Voyage to Terra Australis (1814), a much earlier—and far more peculiar—reference to the term exists in a 1693 English edition of a fictional voyage. This rare book, an imaginary travel narrative originally written in French by Gabriel…

Correcting a Century-Old Cartographic Myth For centuries, European explorers and cartographers speculated about the true geography of California. One of the most enduring misconceptions in early mapmaking was the Island of California, a belief that persisted for well over a century. However, by the 18th century, more accurate explorations had revealed that California was, in fact, a peninsula rather than…