In 1837, the expedition was considered useless and dangerous. Nevertheless, Dumont d'Urville embarked aboard L'Astrolabe and La Zélée to push back the boundaries of the world map. From Tierra del Fuego to the Antarctic ice, from the Marquesas Islands to Tahiti, he sailed into the unknown, and on January 22, 1840, landed on a polar coast which he named Adélie Land, in homage to his wife, before claiming it for France.
The Patrick Serouge Bookstore presents the original edition of this exceptional voyage: Voyage to the South Pole and in Oceania on the corvettes L'Astrolabe and La Zélée (Paris, Gide et Cie, 1846): two volumes of picturesque folio atlas bringing together nearly 200 lithographed plates and 9 maps, accompanied by the 10 volumes of text (Paris, Gide, 1842-1844).
A rare cartographic and pictorial record of one of the last great scientific expeditions of the 19th century.