Page - 25 - in >mcs_lab> - Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Sandra Vlasta | Enlightening report versus enlightened traveller 25 During their journey from July 1772 to July 1775, the Forsters collected specimens of plants and animals; Georg drew sketches of both and, in collaboration with his father, recorded their observations and experiences in a travel journal.4 Prior to their departure, Johann Reinhold Forster was under the impression that he had been commissioned by the Admiralty to write the official report of the voyage.5 During the journey, however, he was caught up in several disagreements with other crew members, not least Captain Cook, who was interested in publishing his own account of the voyage. On their return, a sample of the first sixty-four pages of Johann Reinhold Foster’s report was rejected by Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, on the basis of its linguistic shortcomings. Even- tually, following quarrels between the parties, a court decided that Captain Cook should write his own travelogue from the nautical point of view and that Johann Reinhold Forster should concentrate on his observations as a naturalist. The latter, however, had planned to compose a philosophical account of the journey and was not satisfied with giving a mere enumeration of his sightings. In addition, Forster had been promised half of the copper engravings of pain- tings by William Hodges, the artist on board the Resolution. Hodges had been commissioned to paint landscapes and people, while the Forsters were supposed to concentrate on animals and plants. After the dispute with the Admiralty concerning publication rights, the institution eventually prevented Johann Reinhold Forster from using the copper engravings. Thus, For- ster had neither the right to publish the official account of the journey nor access to these key illustrations. The sketches drawn by his son Georg (301 botanical and 271 zoological drawings; see Vorpahl 2007: 625)6 were not ready for publication, and to make matters worse, the Forsters ultimately had to sell them (to the abovementioned Joseph Banks) to finance the publication of Georg’s travelogue (Bredekamp 2020: 28; Vorpahl 2020: 111).7 The dispute over the copper engravings shows that illustrations of travel writing played an important role in the eighteenth century. In fact, aesthetic and technical innovations at the time led to increased attention to book design (see Haischer, Kurbjuhn, Martus, and Nowitzki 2017). There was a heightened awareness that certain aspects (such as paper quality, type area, typography, decorations, copper plates, etc.) affected a work’s marketability and reception — an argument that Genette also conveys in his definition of paratext (see the quote above, Genette 1997: 2). Both the Forsters and Cook were aware of the significance of images when it came to travelogues:8 an account with images of hitherto new and unseen landscapes, people, objects, 4 The latter — all in all six folio volumes — is usually referred to as Johann Reinhold Forster’s unpublished jour- nal, entitled Journal of a Voyage on Board his Majesty’s Ship Resolution. As Frank Vorpahl notes, however, it was written in English and to such a high standard (with hardly any errors) that it is obvious that Georg (whose English was much better than his father’s) had contributed (see Vorpahl 2007: 619). In any case, the journal formed the basis of the travelogue that Georg would write upon their return. 5 For a brief overview of the genesis of Georg Forster’s travelogue and an extensive bibliography, see Görbert (2014: 36–37), Vorpahl (2007), and Steiner (1983). 6 In a later article, Vorpahl mentions 630 sketches altogether; see Vorpahl (2020: 110). 7 Seventy-five sketches of plants by Georg Forster were nonetheless published by the Forsters shortly following their return to London in the groundbreaking botanical volume Characteres generum plantarum. In this work, one can also detect the strong influence of Carl von Linné’s scientific classification (Vorpahl 2020: 14–15). In fact, Linné’s pupil, Anders Sparrman, joined the Resolution in Cape Town (Bredekamp 2020: 19). 8 In fact, in his preface to the German edition of Reise um die Welt, Georg Forster provides a detailed account of the circumstances of the engravings and the fact that those published in Cook’s account had at least partly been promised to his father (see Forster 1983: 12–14).