Joseph Banks

This biography follows the naturalist Joseph Banks from a Lincolnshire inheritance and early botany through the Newfoundland voyage and the three-year circumnavigation in Endeavour under James Cook. O'Brian dwells on Tahiti, New Zealand, and the Australian coast, then on Banks's later life as a London patron: the Royal Society, Kew, collectors sent abroad, the Bounty breadfruit scheme, and advice on New South Wales. Journals and letters supply much of the voice. The book is a narrative life of an explorer who became an organiser of science, not a novel and not a history of the Navy.

Three-quarter-bound in dark red cloth with a Modigliani paper front board blocked and printed with a monochrome design by Chris Wormell.