The Life of Captain James Cook, the Circumnavigator

Kitson, Arthur, 1848-1915Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
533K words
Chapters
54

Tags

English Originals General Biography Human GeographyDiscoveryGlobal VoyageScience EnlightenmentLegendary LivesAdventure JourneyExplorerMaritime ExplorationHeroismExotic Culture

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Life of Captain James Cook, the Circumnavigator by Arthur KitsonAuthor: Kitson, Arthur, 1848-1915,Language: English, Class: G: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation, Release Date: Jan 1, 2004

Editor's review

This biography of Captain Cook was written by the nineteenth-century author Arthur Kitson and circulates freely in the original English through Project Gutenberg as a public-domain work of geography and exploration. Its value lies not in sensational adventure narrative but in placing Cook's three Pacific voyages within the context of eighteenth-century navigation technology and imperial expansion: from observing the transit of Venus to charting New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, from managing crew health to contact with Pacific indigenous peoples, the reader sees a navigator's multiple roles among science, logistics, and politics. Kitson's narrative carries a Victorian biographical tone, with material organized around the course of the voyages and the subject's character; it reads steadily but does not, like modern biographies, discuss source controversies at length. It is suitable as introductory reading for the history of navigation, the history of geographical discovery, or English-language biography, and for readers who have only a vague impression of Cook and wish first to establish an outline of the timeline. As a public-domain e-book, this edition has no modern annotations, so readers must themselves attend to the correspondence between place names and dates.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and the year-by-year framework of Cook's three voyages before entering the main text, so as not to get lost in voyage details.
  2. Keep a map of the Pacific at hand for reference, marking stopping points and charted areas as you go.
  3. When encountering unfamiliar place names or persons, skip them for the moment and check them together after finishing a leg of the voyage, to keep up reading momentum.
  4. If reading in English proves difficult, first read a Chinese biography of Cook to establish the outline, then return to the corresponding chapters of this book.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54

FAQ

Is this a complete Chinese translation? No. It is an English public-domain e-book released by Project Gutenberg, with the main text in the original English, no Chinese translation, and no modern editorial notes; a certain level of English reading ability is required before reading.
Can I understand it without a background in maritime history? You can follow the main thread. Kitson's narrative proceeds in voyage order, with persons and events clearly presented; however, there are many eighteenth-century nautical terms and place names, so it is advisable to read alongside a map and brief biographical materials on Cook for smoother comprehension.
How does this book differ from modern biographies of Cook? This book was written in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, in a tone closer to Victorian biography, focusing on narrating the course of the voyages and the subject's character, with less discussion of source controversies and indigenous perspectives. Modern biographies usually add new material from archaeology, anthropology, and archival research; the two can be read as complements.

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About the author

Kitson, Arthur, 1848-1915 Author · 1848–1915

Arthur Kitson (1848–1915) is an English author about whom little is publicly known and whose life still awaits further research; his name currently appears mainly in library catalog records. According to the holdings in this database, he left one work, The Life of Captain James Cook, the Circumnavigator. The book takes as its subject the life and voyages of the navigator Captain James Cook and belongs to the genre of biography, narrating his several expeditions across the Pacific and combining the arrangement of historical sources with descriptive storytelling. Because public information is limited, Kitson's education, career, and other writings cannot be reliably established, making a full assessment of his output difficult. The available information reflects only his contribution to the subject of Cook biography; his work offers a referable narrative account of Cook's maritime career and has a certain documentary value.