The Diary of Henry Teonge, Chaplain on Board his Majesty’s Ships Assistance, Bristol, and Royal Oak, Anno 1675 to 1679. Now First Published from the Original MS. with Biographical and Historical Notes London: Printed for Charles Knight, 1825.
First edition of this famous travel diary, considered to be one of the most important accounts of seventeenth century seafaring life.
Octavo. [ii], xviii, 327, [1] pp., with folding facsimile diary page as frontispiece, added engraved title, and one woodcut text illustration. Bound in modern calf, spine gilt in compartments with morocco label, top edges gilt; damp-stain affecting lower half of half-title through first leaf of text, last leaf with a few spots of browning, otherwise a very good, uncut copy. From the library of Dr. James Stewart Geike M.D. (b. 1877), with his bookplate featuring a sailing ship.
“The nature of Teonge’s diary, and the disappearance of the manuscript for almost a century after its first publication in 1825, led to persistent suggestions that it might have been a forgery. Confirmation both of Teonge’s existence and of the sequence of events which he recorded came from the Admiralty records in the Public Record Office, and the re-emergence of the manuscript itself at a Sotheby’s sale in 1918 put the matter conclusively to rest.†(DNB)
Teonge (1621-90) was an English clergy man and diarist best known for the present work. Due to financial difficulties, he enlisted in the Navy and became a chaplain on the ships Assistance, Bristol and Royal Oak, completing three voyages to the Mediterranean. He died in relative obscurity.
Allibone, p. 2375; Lowndes, 2605; J. D. Davies, ‘Teonge, Henry (1621–1690)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
ID:
3622
$
400