author
Georg Forster
1754–1794
A restless explorer, scientist, and writer, he helped turn travel writing into something vivid, observant, and deeply human. His firsthand account of James Cook’s second voyage brought the Pacific world to European readers with unusual curiosity and empathy.
4 Audiobooks
The Three Voyages of Captain Cook Round the World, Vol. III. Being the First of the Second Voyage
by James Cook, Georg Forster
The Three Voyages of Captain Cook Round the World. Vol. IV. Being the Second of the Second Voyage.
by James Cook, Georg Forster
Florulae Insularum Australium Prodromus
by Georg Forster
About the author
Born in 1754 near Danzig, Georg Forster grew up in a world of study, travel, and scientific observation. As a teenager he accompanied his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, on Captain James Cook’s second voyage around the world, an experience that shaped the rest of his life.
Forster became known for A Voyage Round the World, a lively and perceptive account of that expedition. He was more than a travel writer: he worked as a naturalist, geographer, translator, and thinker, and he is often remembered for the breadth of his interests and for the respect he showed toward the peoples and places he described.
Later in life, he was drawn into the political upheavals of the French Revolution era and took part in revolutionary activity in Mainz. He died in Paris in 1794, still young, but his writing and scientific curiosity left a lasting mark on travel literature and early modern ethnography.