The dissenting minister Andrew Kippis (1725 95) was a Member of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Society. With this work of 1788, he was the first biographer of Captain James Cook (1728 79), although several of Cook's colleagues, including Johann Reinhold Forster in 1778 and David Samwell in 1786, had previously published memoirs of their service with him. Believing that 'his public transactions ... are the grand objects to which the attention of his biographer must be directed', Kippis draws on the official Admiralty accounts of Cook's voyages and focuses on his professional life....