A collection of voyages. In four volumes. Containing I. Captain William Dampier's voyages round the world. II. The voyages of Lionel Wafer; giving an account of his being left on the isthmus of America. III. A voyage round the world: containing an account of Capt. Dampier's expedition into the South-Seas in the ship St. George by W. Funnell, mate to Capt. Dampier. IV. Capt. Cowley's voyage round the Globe. V. Capt. Sharp's journey over the isthmus of Darien, and expedition in the South-Seas. VI. Capt. Wood's voyage through the streights of Magellan. VII. Mr. Roberts's adventures and sufferings amongst the Corsairs of the Levant. Illustrated with maps and draughts: also several birds, fishes, and plants, not found in this part of the world; curiously engraven on copper-plates

The "best" edition of Dampier: the complete collected edition of the exciting travels of the English explorer, pirate, privateer, navigator, and naturalist William Dampier (1651-1715). He was the first person to make three circumnavigations, and the most significant explorer between Drake and Cook, borrowing bravado from Drake and anticipating Cook's methods of inquiry.

Dampier was of course the first Englishman to land on and explore any part of the Australian continent: the first volume here includes his recollection of how, in 1688, "being now clear of all the Islands, we stood off South, intending to touch at New Holland, a part of Terra Australis Incognita, to see what the country would afford us... New Holland is a very large tract of Land. It is not yet determined whether it is an Island or a main Continent; but I am certain that it joyns neither to Asia, Africa, nor America...". Along with his interesting observations on Shark Bay and the northwest coast of Australia his books are particularly good on the flora and fauna of the region: he was effectively Australia's first natural historian, and many of his bird, fish and flower discoveries are illustrated with charming woodcut illustrations.

Dampier's books, as well as directly inspiring the stories of both Swift and Defoe, were all but devoured as thrilling narratives by an enthusiastic reading public, accounting for present-day scarcity of both the original editions and this collected version. His first book was published in 1697, an account of his early voyaging in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, while his account of the famous voyage of HMS Roebuck appeared in two parts in 1703 and 1709. All of his works were issued by Knapton, who also issued the narratives of other buccaneers, many of whom were colleagues of Dampier. As a result, in 1729, with interest in Dampier unabated, Knapton decided to issue this collected edition, with three volumes devoted to Dampier himself, and a fourth containing Funnell's critical account of the Dampier voyage as well as the narratives of Cowley, Sharp, Wood and Roberts. The work includes the narratives of Wafer and Funnell as well as the whole book of William Hacke. Knapton used the latest edition of each of the four volumes which had been separately published between 1697 and 1709, and offered them together in this form as a uniform set with a new general title-page; thus the first volume has the general title-page "A Collection of Voyages..." followed by the volume's original, separate title-page "A New Voyage round the World..." showing it to be in its "seventh edition, corrected" form, while the others are represented by third or fourth edition texts.

Dampier's complete works represent a major body of Pacific description, important for any study of the discovery and colonisation of the Pacific. As James A. Williamson wrote in his introduction to the Argonaut Press's 1939 edition of the Voyage to New Holland, 'Dampier's permanent service to his countrymen was to arouse their interest in the exploration of the Pacific. He did it so effectively that in the eighteenth century they took the lead in revealing the tropical islands and the coasts of Australia and New Zealand and two dominions of the British Commonwealth are... the outcome of that enterprise. His third and last book, the Voyage to New Holland, concentrated attention more particularly on the western and southern Pacific. It might have been more aptly described as a voyage to New Britain and a project for Eastern Australia, for there essentially lay the focus of his interest...'.

As the wikipedia article points out, Dampier's achievements were multiple and various. As well as his major geographical discoveries and seafaring achievements, 'His expeditions were among the first to identify and name a number of plants, animals, foods, and cooking techniques for a European audience; being among the first English writers to use words such as avocado, barbecue, and chopsticks. In describing the preparation of avocados, he was the first European to describe the making of guacamole, named the breadfruit plant, and made frequent documentation of the taste of numerous foods foreign to the European palate such as flamingo and manatee'.