1749 Gentleman's Magazine - Quito, Equador - Siberia & Bering Sea, N.E.Passage

Description

A rare and early monthly issue of the Gentleman's Magazine published in London for June 1749
This venerable publication, the first to use the term "magazine", was founded in 1731 and continued uninterrupted for almost 200 years - see below. The magazine is full of domestic reports, essays, editorials, foreign news, poetry, new books, weather, births and deaths etc.
This edition of 44 pages includes several reports on recent discoveries by Vitus Bering - see below - on the separation of continents between Russia and North America (North East Passage). One report confirms
that California is no longer thought to be an island. An engraved map of Siberia illustrates the northern coast line and the eastern extremity of the Continent - see scan
In other news the magazine provides highlights of the current state of Europe including Russia, Sweden, Austria, Germany, Italy, Holland and France - see scan
Other interesting accounts relate to a description of Quito and other parts of Peru, now Equador - see scan
Details on London deaths in the previous month by age group show children under the age of 2 representing approx. 30 % of the total - see scan. Giving birth at that time was a risky business.
Fascinating reading for the historian. G
ood condition. The magazine has been bound with other issues and subsequently dis-bound. Page size 8 x 5 inches
Note: The magazine cover calls for several engravings which have been removed and a "plate of noblemen's arms" which was not bound in until the supplement was published at the end of the year
See more of these in Seller's Other Items, priced at a fraction of most
dealer prices
The Gentleman's Magazine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Front page of
The Gentleman's Magazine
, May 1759
The Gentleman's Magazine
was a monthly magazine
[1]
founded in
London
, England, by
Edward Cave
in January 1731.
[2]
It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term
magazine
(from the
French
magazine
, meaning "storehouse") for a
periodical
.
[3]
Samuel Johnson
's first regular employment as a writer was with
The Gentleman's Magazine
.
Contents
1
History
2
Series
3
Indexes
4
See also
4.1
Authors of works appearing in
The Gentleman's Magazine
5
Artists, painters, topographers associated with
The Gentleman's Magazine
6
References
7
Further reading
8
See also
9
External links
History
[
edit
]
The original complete title was
The Gentleman's Magazine: or, Trader's monthly intelligencer
. Cave's innovation was to create a monthly digest of news and commentary on any topic the educated public might be interested in, from commodity prices to
Latin poetry
. It carried original content from a stable of regular contributors, as well as extensive quotations and extracts from other periodicals and books. Cave, who edited
The Gentleman's Magazine
under the
pen name
"Sylvanus Urban", was the first to use the term
magazine
(meaning "storehouse") for a periodical. Contributions to the magazine frequently took the form of letters, addressed to "Mr. Urban". The iconic illustration of
St. John's Gate
on the front of each issue (occasionally updated over the years) depicted Cave's home, in effect, the magazine's "office".
Before the founding of
The Gentleman's Magazine
, there were specialized journals, but no such wide-ranging publications (although there had been attempts, such as
The Gentleman's Journal
, which was edited by
Peter Motteux
and ran from 1692 to 1694).
Samuel Johnson
's first regular employment as a writer was with
The Gentleman's Magazine
. During a time when parliamentary reporting was banned, Johnson regularly contributed parliamentary reports as "Debates of the Senate of Magna Lilliputia". Though they reflected the positions of the participants, the words of the debates were mostly Johnson's own. The name "
Columbia
", a poetic name for America coined by Johnson, first appears in a 1738 weekly publication of the debates of the British Parliament in the magazine.
[4]
[5]
A skilled businessman, Edward Cave developed an extensive distribution system for
The Gentleman's Magazine
. It was read throughout the English-speaking world and continued to flourish through the 18th century and much of the 19th century under a series of different editors and publishers. It went into decline towards the end of the 19th century and finally ceased general publication in September 1907. However, issues consisting of four pages each were printed in very small editions between late 1907 and 1922 in order to keep the title formally "in print".
Series
[
edit
]
Top half of Volume One, Issue One, published January 1731
1731–1735
The Gentleman's Magazine
or
Monthly Intelligencer
1736–1833
The Gentleman's Magazine
and Historical Chronicle
1834–1856 (June) New Series:
The Gentleman's Magazine
1856 (July)–1868 (May) New Series:
The Gentleman's Magazine
and Historical Review
1868 (June)–1922 Entirely New Series:
The Gentleman's Magazine
Vitus Bering
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For other uses, see
Vitus Bering (disambiguation)
.
Vitus Jonassen Bering
post-mortem reconstruction of Bering's face
Born
5 August 1681
Horsens
,
Denmark
Died
19 December 1741 (aged 60)
Bering Island
,
Russian Empire
Allegiance
Russian Empire
Service/
branch
Imperial Russian Navy
Years of service
1704–1741
Spouse(s)
Anna Bering
Vitus Jonassen Bering
(baptised 5 August 1681 – 19 December 1741),
[1]
[nb 1]
also known as
Ivan Ivanovich Bering
,
[2]
was a
Danish
cartographer and explorer in Russian service, and an officer in the
Russian Navy
. He is known as a leader of two Russian expeditions, namely the
First Kamchatka Expedition
and the
Great Northern Expedition
, exploring the north-eastern coast of the Asian continent and from there the western coast on the North American continent. The
Bering Strait
, the
Bering Sea
,
Bering Island
, the
Bering Glacier
and the
Bering Land Bridge
were all named in his honor.
Taking to the seas as a ship's boy at the age of fifteen, Bering travelled extensively over the next eight years, as well as taking naval training in Amsterdam. In 1704, he enrolled with the rapidly expanding Russian navy of Tsar Peter I (
Peter the Great
). After serving with the navy in significant but non-combat roles during the
Great Northern War
, Bering resigned in 1724 to avoid the continuing embarrassment of his low rank to Anna, his wife of eleven years; and upon retirement was promoted to First Captain. Bering was permitted to keep the rank as he rejoined the Russian navy later the same year.
He was selected by the Tsar to captain the
First Kamchatka Expedition
, an expedition set to sail north from Russian outposts on the
Kamchatka peninsula
, with the charge to map the new areas visited and to establish whether Asia and America shared a land border. Bering departed from St. Petersburg in February 1725 as the head of a 34-man expedition, aided by the expertise of Lieutenants
Martin Spangberg
and
Aleksei Chirikov
. The party took on men as it headed towards
Okhotsk
, encountering many difficulties (most notably a lack of food) before arriving at the settlement. From there, the men sailed to the Kamchatka peninsula, preparing new ships there and sailing north (repeating a little-documented journey of
Semyon Dezhnyov
eighty years previously). In August 1728, Bering decided that they had sufficient evidence that there was clear sea between Asia and America, which he did not sight during the trip. For the first expedition, Bering was rewarded with money, prestige, and a promotion to the noble rank of
Captain Commander
. He immediately started preparations for a second trip.
Having returned to Okhotsk with a much larger, better prepared, and much more ambitious expedition, Bering set off for an expedition towards
North America
in 1741. While doing so, the expedition spotted
Mount Saint Elias
, and sailed past
Kodiak Island
. A storm separated the ships, but Bering sighted the southern coast of
Alaska
, and a landing was made at
Kayak Island
or in the vicinity. Adverse conditions forced Bering to return, but he documented some of the
Aleutian Islands
on his way back. One of the sailors died and was buried on one of these islands, and Bering named the island group
Shumagin Islands
after him. Bering himself became too ill to command his ship, which was at last driven to seek refuge on an uninhabited island in the
Commander Islands
group (
Komandorskiye Ostrova
) in the southwest
Bering Sea
. On 19 December 1741 Vitus Bering died on the island, which was given the name
Bering Island
after him, near the
Kamchatka Peninsula
, reportedly from
scurvy
(although this has been contested
[nb 2]
), along with 28 men of his company.
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