Hordern House June Acquisitions 2013

HORDERN HOUSE June 2013

acqs@hordern.com

[BARRINGTON] THOMPSON, G. The Lives of Notorious and Daring Highwaymen…

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Duodecimo, frontispiece, a good copy in original green cloth, old ownership inscription to titlepage. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, W. & T. Fordyce, 1841.

Barrington lives

Arresting popular account of British thieves and scoundrels with a good separate chapter on the career of gentleman pickpocket George Barrington.

The Barrington chapter of 28 pages recounts his remarkable career from childhood through to transportation; with a short postscript on his service as convict superintendent in New South Wales.

$300

[BELAIR, Pierre-Alexandre Julienne de].

Essais cosmographico-poëtiques ou choix de lectures… à 2 une nouvelle histoire des voyages.

Octavo, [ii], 236 pp., fine uncut copy in original buntpapier wrappers La Haye and Paris, Pierre Aillaud, 1786.

Science in the wake of Pacific exploration

Curious and eclectic collection of essays on geography, astronomy, and recent voyage discoveries. The geographical sections are informed by the discoveries of Cook, la Pérouse and other explorers of the Pacific.

Belair blends astronomy, discoveries and other scientific observations with excerpts from Voltaire and other poets. In the preface he discusses the implications of recent voyages to the Pacific Ocean, and lists la Pérouse, Wallis, Carteret, Byron, Bougainville and Cook; a frame of reference which informs many of the wide ranging essays. For example, in discussing the extent of the world’s known and unknown oceans, Belair speculates on the vast undersea mountain chains that connect the continents and polar regions with New Holland.

The author, Pierre-Alexandre Julienne de Belair, was a gifted engineeer born in Paris in 1747 who defended Paris against the Prussians in 1792. $1250

[BENNELONG] JONES, Stephen (ed.).

The Spirit of the Public Journals…

Seventeen volumes, duodecimo, in excellent condition, in attractive modern wrappers with double spine labels to each volume. London, James Ridgway, 1797- 1814.

Bennelong won’t fight the French

A marvellous long run of an intriguing late-Georgian journal, with a good deal of interest to contemporary Australia, most notably printing a letter said to have been penned by Bennelong in London. There is also an (unrecorded?) poem about marriage in Tahiti based on Cook’s first voyage, and a poem commemorating the death of Jonas Dryander, the botanist who worked with Sir Joseph Banks at Soho Square (for full description see the extended online note).

Considered a ‘fascinating but relatively untapped source for Romantic Studies…’, each of the annual volumes gives a strikingly complete overview of the popular scandals and events of the day, and it is intriguing to see how New South Wales is viewed through its prism.

The first volume prints the “Copy of a letter from Baneelon, one of the natives of New South Wales, now in London, to his wife Barangaroo, at Botany Bay” (pp. 114-6). Almost certainly a satire, this is nonetheless an important (because unusual) appropriation of Bennelong, who was only vouchsafed the most fleeting references in the contemporary press. It is also notable for the adoption of several plausible details which show that the author did have some close knowledge of Bennelong’s visit: the addressing of the letter to Barangaroo, the use of the suffix “gal” in reference to nationality, and the perfectly convincing – but no doubt fictional – neologism of him calling the soldiers at Botany Bay “the red men”. “Bennelong” says at one point that he has refused to join the army against the French, “as the French never took away my wife, or stole my fishing-nets, lines, and throwing-stick.” The letter concludes with his hope that Barangaroo

$3200 will be saved from “lightning, sharks, and red men.”

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[BRENCHLEY] Original photograph of Queen Salote Lupepau’u of Tonga, and a Samoan chief, taken during the cruise of 4 HMS Curacoa.

Two albumen photographs, the first measuring 92 x 70 mm. and mounted on a card inscribed ‘The Queen of Tongatabu Friendly Group’ in an old cursive hand; the second 91 x 65 mm. and likewise mounted; both photographs in excellent condition. Tonga and Samoa, 1865.

Royal photographs from the Brenchley voyage

Two albumen photographs of Queen Salote Lupepau’u of Tonga and a Samoan chief taken in 1865, during the cruise of HMS Curacoa.

Commanded by Commodore Sir William Wiseman, Curacoa visited Norfolk Island, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, the New Hebrides, the Solomons and New Caledonia.

These albumen prints were later used as the basis for two separate wood engravings in Brenchley’s published narrative of the cruise Jottings During the Cruise of HMS Curacoa (Longmans 1873).

King George Tupou I ruled from 1845 to 1893. Baptised by Wesleyan missionaries he took the name Sia’osi (George), and renounced all but his favourite wife who was baptised Salote (Charlotte). Brenchley states that the Queen was unwell when the official party, first met but later sat for this portrait photograph.

Queen Salote was the grandmother of the future Queen Salote Tupou III, ruler of Tonga from 1918 to 1965. $825

[BYRON] CLERKE, Charles.

Viaggio Intorno al Mondo Fatto Dalla Nave Inglese il Delfino Comandata dal Capo Squadra Byron…

Square octavo, engraved frontispiece, 4, 152 pp., a few ink marks on the title-page but remarkably fresh throughout, untrimmed, in serviceable modern boards. Firenze, Allegrini, 1768.

Would you like a biscotti?

Contemporary Italian edition of the famous account of Byron’s circumnavigation by Charles Clerke. As would be expected, the edition includes an excellent new version of the famous frontispiece of an English sailor offering a towering Patagonian couple a biscuit. We have never seen another copy offered for sale.

Clerke’s account was originally published in London in 1767. This Italian translation would appear to be based on the first London edition (because it does not include a short appendix that was in the second).

Byron’s voyage to the Pacific was the first major English voyage in the region since Anson, and would become the first part of Hawkesworth’s famous compendium of South Sea voyages. Clerke later served with Captain Cook on all three of his voyages, succeeding him as commander of the third voyage but shortly after dying at Petropavlovsk in August 1779.

The work was famous for the sensation created by rumours of Patagonian giants. Extraordinarily, the stories seem to have been encouraged by the British government to divert attention from Byron’s taking possession of the Falklands, politically the most sensitive and controversial aspect of his voyage. The amusing affair of the Patagonian giants embroiled many great figures of the Enlightenment including Voltaire (see discussion by Helen Wallis in the Hakluyt edition of Byron’s Journal, ed. Gallagher, appendix III. $2850

O’Reilly-Reitman, 243.

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[COOK: SECOND VOYAGE] NORTHCOTE, J. (after).

The Death of Capt. Alexander Hood, who Gloriously Fell in the Moment of Victory on the 21st April last.

6 Handcoloured mezzotint measuring 554 x 655 mm. (plate size), very good condition, framed.

London, Jeffryes & Co, Ludgate Hill, 1 October, 1798.

A romantic vision: the death of a veteran of Cook’s second Splendid mezzotint depicting the dramatic death of Alexander Hood, a Royal Navy captain who served under Captain Cook in his early career. This appears to be the only published image of Hood, making it an unusual addition to the known gallery of Cook’s men.

Hood was assigned to the Resolution on 5 March 1772 as a 14 year-old midshipman, taking advantage of his prestigious family connections (he was the first cousin of admirals Lord Hood and Lord Bridport). Hood served with distinction and in the Marquesas on 6 April 1774 Cook named Hood Island in his honour.

Upon return Hood was appointed to service in North American waters where he was promoted captain in 1781 at the age of 23. Hood fought against Napoleonic France, and this mezzotint portrays the his final moments as captain of the British man-of-war Mars. On the evening of 21 April 1798 the Mars ambushed the French frigate Hercule off western Brittany while waiting for the tide to turn.

Both vessels were equally matched with 74 guns, and due to the strength of the current the Hercule was unable to manoeuvre. After the exchange of preliminary broadsides the ships became entangled, and an unusually bloody fire fight ensued. The French lost 315 men killed or wounded before surrender while the Mars sustained lighter casualties.

Hood was grievously wounded in the thigh and died of blood loss (a detail conspicuously absent in this romantic portrayal of the commander’s final moments).

He is here pictured receiving the sword of the French captain who likewise died of his wounds, while a lieutenant points to the lowering of the French colours by moonlight through an open window behind the scene. $5850 Not in Nan Kivell & Spence.

GELL, Philip Lyttelton.

British Exploration of Australasia, Limited. Prospectus.

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Quarto pamphlet, 20 pp. and printed maps, folded at centre; an excellent copy in the original printed wrappers, map of Western Australia to rear cover; with a single-page “Form of Application for Shares” loosely inserted. n.p., circa 1900.

Mining in the Pilbara

Very rare prospectus complete with original share offer form, for a mining company based in Western Australia.

Philip Lyttelton Gell (1852-1926) was the grandson of Sir John Franklin by his first wife, Eleanor Porden. In December 1900 he registered the British Exploration of Australasia, Limited with the objectives of searching for mineral deposits in north-western Australia, using the newly developed railway line from Port Hedland to the Pilbara. Gell was Chairman of the board of directors from its inception, resigning in protest at the time of liquidation in 1909. This prospectus contains several interesting maps, notably a double-page “Map of Nullagine Conglomerates”. $925

[GOLD] HAM, Thomas (publisher).

Illustrated Australian Magazine. Parts 13 to 16, Vol. III.

Three volumes, octavo, frontispiece panorama measuring 320 x 640 mm., seven engraved plates and a lithographed goldfields map; continuously paginated 1-244, with 11 pp. appendix of Victorian squatters; preliminary advertisements and notices extant, a little foxing and wear yet very good condition overall, preserved in the original tinted lithographed wrappers (one issue lacks the rear wrapper cover). Melbourne, Thomas Ham, July and August, 1851.

Gold in them thar Magazines: with work by Ham & Tulloch

Three issues of a marvellous popular magazine published in Melbourne on the eve of the Victorian gold rush, with a magnificent engraved folding panorama of the north Pyrenees (site of one of the earliest gold discoveries in Victoria) and a lithographed map of two goldfields.

Thomas Ham’s magazine is a lively affair, proud of Victoria’s recent separation from New South Wales and bustling with news and gossip. During the period covered by these three issues, from July to October 1851, gold discoveries in Victoria remained modest, although this state of affairs was soon to be reversed.

Excitement about the digs is here tempered by warnings against the folly of seeking easy fortunes, with tirades against moral decline and more sensible concerns about inflation and labour shortages.

In addition to a detailed map of the Yarra and Pyrenees goldfields, the September issue features a large folding frontispiece “View of Youang Hill – North Pyrenees, Victoria” engraved by Thomas Ham from an original topographic sketch by David Tulloch. Tulloch and Ham, of course, soon collaborated on the famous Five Views of the Gold Fields of Mount Alexander and Ballarat (1852). $1400

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JEFFREYS, Lieutenant Charles.

Van Diemen’s Land. Geographical and descriptive delineations of the Island of Van Diemen’s Land.

9 Octavo, fine in Aquarius binding of full calf, gilt spine. London, J.M. Richardson, 1820.

Captain of HMS Kangaroo jumps Surveyor Evans

The first separately published description of Van Diemen’s Land and an important early colonial work. This rare account is also one of the first of many Australian books directly addressed to potential emigrants.

Charles Jeffreys (1782-1826) arrived in Port Jackson as master of HMS Kangaroo with his wife in January 1814. Jeffreys was always something of a chancer, and it was soon apparent that he thought of his official duties as a way of continuing his interest in what amounted to bootlegging liquor and helping out the odd escaping convict. Macquarie virtually expelled him from the colony in April 1817, ordering Jeffreys to sail for England with no Australian landfalls whatsoever. Yet later that month Jeffreys landed sly grog in Hobart, where he assaulted a fellow officer. He sailed for England and escaped prosecution on a legal technicality (as was often the case with disreputable colonials officers of his type).

One of the passengers on board the Kangaroo was Surveyor General G.W. Evans, from whom the bulk of the text was quite literally stolen by Jeffreys to produce this book. Evans eventually retrieved his manuscript from Jeffreys and published his legitimate account in 1822. Despite this, Jeffrey’s account remains the first separately published work concerning Van Diemen’s Land, and is ‘a notable book and quite attractive despite its sordid history. It is essential to any collection of Tasmaniana and would make a valuable acquisition for any collection’ (Australian Rare Books). $3500 Australian Rare Books, 54, 44; Ferguson, 787, 777.

KING, Phillip Parker & Francis Price BLACKWOOD. Complete Sailing Directions for the various Passages to and through Torres’ Straits…

Octavo, [iv], 48 pp., moderate water-stain affects lower margin, rear board scuffed, yet a good copy in original publisher’s papered boards with printed title “Torres’ Straits and Eastern Passages”. Sydney, Reading and Wellbank, 1864.

Great Barrier Reef: King, Blackwood, Denham

Very rare Australian coastal navigational handbook based on the work of hydrographer Phillip Parker King in charting and piloting the Great Barrier Reef.

This 1864 “second” edition (see below) is of great significance as the first to print the important new information based on the Fly voyage of Francis Blackwood and the lesser known contemporary survey by H.M. Denham of HMS Herald.

The book explains particularly the “inner route” as navigated by King, and the “outer route” laid down by Blackwood on the Fly. King’s first notes on the subject were published in his account of the Mermaid and Bathurst voyages, and were considered important enough to be published separately in 1832, and then reprinted in the New South Wales Calendar for 1836. A last edition was published in 1843.

This Sydney-published “second edition” of 1864, therefore, should be considered effectively a completely new work, as it is greatly expanded with the inclusion of both Blackwood’s observations and the strictly contemporary information based on the survey work of Denham concerning ‘the exact positions of outlying islands, reefs, and other dangers, in the outer route to the straits’.

This copy appears to have been used by a vessel navigating the inner route, as evidenced by a manuscript notation on page nine of King’s directions, changing the printed bearing to “about N by W”. By their very nature navigational handbooks rarely survive, worn out by usage at sea or discarded when newer information was published. $11,500 Ferguson, 18307.

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[LA PEROUSE] “CLAUDIUS” (pseud. C.-C. RUELLE).

La Science Populaire… Voyage de La Perouse autour de monde.

11 Duodecimo, unopened and untrimmed, some foxing; very good in the original printed wrappers, chips and stains but rather good. Paris, Jules Renouard, 1839.

I, Claudius

Charming account of the La Pérouse voyage for children, with notice of the later discoveries relating to the great French mariner, including chapters on d’Entrecasteaux, Dumont d’Urville and Peter Dillon. These concluding sections concentrate on the wrecks at Vanikoro and the monument erected there by Dumont d’Urville, with the final section describing the tragic irony of the fact that d’Entrecasteaux had sailed past Vanikoro in May 1793.

This work was published by Charles-Claude Ruelle under the pseudonym “Claudius” as part of a longer series of occasional works on all manner of subjects, with separate volumes on for example Columbus, Drake, and Ross, but also on subjects such as electricity, science, the Bible, and French history. Not noted in Forbes’ bibliography of Hawaii. $600

[LEVERIAN] [LONDON GUIDEBOOK] A Companion to all the Principal Places of Curiosity and Entertainment in and about London and Westminster… 12 Duodecimo, very good, in contemporary polished calf with simple gil decoration to boards and flat spine. London, J. Drew, 1803.

With a full chapter on the Leverian museum A rare 1803 guidebook which among much of interest includes a full chapter on the Leverian Museum, “near the foot of Blackfriars bridge, on the Surrey side”. This is the tenth edition of what would have been a most familiar work with Georgian visitors to London, and gives an unvarnished and detailed account of what was likely to be of interest to the well-heeled traveller: the inclusion of the Leverian, which is also singled out on the title-page as one of the main attractions of the city, is testament to the great success of the Museum.

The unnamed author struggles with the cornucopia on display at the Leverian, listing without much system the endless curiosities from all parts of the globe; the Americas, “the newly-discovered islands”, China, Africa, Jamaica and so on, ranging from fossils to decorated shoes, from enormous mammals right through to tiny birds and boxes displaying insects. “In viewing them you are filled with surprize and delight, and the wandering eyes look round with astonishment.” It is interesting to see that tourist London is so little changed that many of the other sites listed could still be visited today (although the fares for the hackney cabs listed in some detail are probably out of date…).

ESTC lists a handful of different editions, but any is now quite scarce on the market. $1250

[LEVERIAN] [YORKSHIRE MAGAZINE] “Sketch of the Life and Services of the Late Capt. James Cook” in Yorkshire Magazine…

13 Thick octavo, 11 plates including engraved title-page, missing February issue, but generally very good; in sound modern buckram. York, T. Wilson, R. Spence, and Crask & Lund, 1786.

Life of Cook and life of Lever

Eleven issues of an uncommon York-published journal, comprising almost the full run of the inaugural year of publication. 1786 saw the demise of the original Leverian Museum, which is noticed with a surprisingly full article, but also a rapid increase in interest in Australia as the rumours of Botany Bay began to fly, meaning that this volume includes several important contributions, surprisingly including a good biography of Captain Cook.

The two most significant articles are:

“Memoirs of Sir Ashton Lever” (pp. 74-7), written in the immediate aftermath of the dispersal of Lever’s Museum by lottery, the article includes an excellent biography of his life, and notice of his “universal benevolence”.

“Sketch of the Life and Services of the late Capt. James Cook” (pp. 363-8).

A good biography published at an odd date. Includes the rumour that his wife Elizabeth was also his goddaughter.

There is besides an article based on the famous imaginary voyage to the “Isle of Pines” (a seventeenth-century fiction based on a wreck near the Australian coast); “A Description of New Holland” printing a good account of New Holland which is based on Hawkesworth’s official account of Cook; and the “Trial of James-George Semple… Prince of Swindlers”, describing the crook who was later famous as a convict on the mutiny of the Lady Shore in 1797.

Not present here is the issue for February 1786. Bound into the back of this volume is an incomplete copy of a second work, The History and Antiquities of Yorkshire (York, pp. 1-192 only).

$1450

MACROBERTSON INTERNATIONAL AIR RACE. Guiding Brochure and Route Handbook Issued to Competitors in the MacRobertson International Air Races England – Melbourne October 1934…

Original dark blue folding ring binder, 266 x 180 mm., lettered to front, 57 printed leaves with metallic binding eyelets as issued; title-page a little worn at inner edge, small closed tear to map expertly repaired, yet in overall excellent condition. United Kingdom, Royal Aero Club, 1934.

In Rangoon, call 6734

Scarce handbook published for the use of pilots in the famous England to Australia air race of October 1934.

Held in conjunction with the Victorian centenary celebrations, the race was sponsored by Australian confectionery mogul Sir Macpherson Robertson who provided £15,000 for the prize pool. Widely publicised, the race ultimately had 20 planes entered from seven different countries. Only one Australian team entered the fray, and the grand prize was snatched by British pilots Charles Scott and Tom Campbell Black who reached Melbourne in just under 3 days.

Other than five compulsory stops in Baghdad, Allahabad, Singapore, Darwin and Charleville, the aviators were free to choose their exact course. In addition to the 30 leaves stipulating conditions and regulations, this handbook includes a large folding map detailing the route, and a further 27 printed leaves detailing each of the stopping points, with information including a map of the approach and airfield, location of the telephone, accommodation, and so on.

The race was filled with sensational incidents, notably the fate of the Dutch airliner Uiver, the crew of which lost their bearings in a storm over Australia and made a forced landing at Albury. $2800

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[NSW CORPS] BRITISH PARLIAMENT. New South Wales Veteran Companies. Return to an Order of the Honourable House of Commons…

15 Folio, 16 pp., with additional docket titling leaf; disbound, a little frayed at extremities, very good overall. London, House of Commons, July, 1832.

Darling on the NSW Corps

Uncommon governmental report on the state of the New South Wales military, detailing the three companies of veterans that were raised in Britain and sent to Australia in 1826.

This report audits the NSW veteran companies and prints eight pages of correspondence between the former Governor, Sir Ralph Darling, and Lord Palmerstone, Lord Fitzroy Somerset, Sir Herbert Taylor and other notables regarding pensions, land claims and other conditions of service. The veterans were troublesome from the start, with rumblings of mutiny on the voyage out, which is why Darling here explains his decision to send them into the interior rather than the large towns, ‘where they would only add to the dissipation which too generally prevails.’

The report includes a memorandum of 1829 stating the rewards for each man (small farm holdings), and also gives an audit of the costs.

$725 Ferguson, 1554.

PEAKE, Mervyn.

“All This and Beven Too” original pen and ink drawing.

Original pen drawing, 29 x 21cms, signed “Peake 1943” lower left, mounted and framed in fine condition. Sussex or Soho?, 1943.

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Charming original drawing by the Gormenghast author

Superb original pen and ink drawing of a miserable kangaroo in London, done for Quentin Crisp’s 1943 war time book of poetry, All This and Bevin Too (and illustrated at page 13 of the book). The drawing depicts a kangaroo sitting in his blacked-out flat, struggling to fill out a civil service questionnaire; Ernest Bevin, of course, was the Minister of Labour in the United Kingdom as a member of the wartime coalition.

The fine and intricate detail of Peake’s drawing was poorly served by the subsequent publication in Crisp’s book, a victim of the wartime paper rationing, but this original drawing captures the artist’s marvellous skill. It is also an example of Peake’s main artistic endeavours over the period of World War Two – depicting war scenes in both painting and poetry. Highly respected by his peers, Peake’s friends included Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene and his work is included in the National Portrait Gallery and the Imperial War Museum.

Mervyn Peake was born in Jiangxi Province of central China the son of missionaries with the London Missionary Society. He was educated at Tientsin Grammar School before moving to England in 1922. This drawing dates from what is genuinely agreed to be the most productive years of Peakes’ career, not least his writing of the Gormenghast trilogy. $6500

PICART, Bernard and Jean Frédéric BERNARD. Cérémonies et coutumes Religieuses de tous les peuples du Monde… Nouvelle édition… description des usages 17 religieux des diverses Nations qui habitent l’Océan Pacifique et le Continent de la Nouvelle Hollande…

Twelve volumes, folio, with the complete suite of 281 engraved plates for this edition (39 folding), some small staining affects two volumes, otherwise a fine set in attractive uniform contemporary gilt decorated quarter calf with vellum corners. Paris, Prudhomme, 1807-1810.

The “South Seas” edition: comparative religion

Splendid enlarged edition of this major work of comparative religion, first published between 1723 and 1743: there were several eighteenth-century editions, but this fuller edition published early in the nineteenth century was substantially expanded, including information on the South Seas derived from the voyagers of the previous few decades.

Picart’s work was one of the most important and influential works of comparative religion ever published. Unprecedented in scope and detail it examines religious ritual and costume across the globe. Previous studies in comparative religion lacked detailed illustration and negatively compared foreign faiths with Christianity. Just as Picart sought to explore the common humanity of religious experience, so he warned of the dangers of fanaticism, with several plates depicting the Inquisition at work including the courts of Madrid and Goa, an auto-dafé, and the ritual costumes of those condemned to die in the flames.

The seventh volume of this set examines the exotic religions of Asia and the Americas and includes 77 astonishing plates. Another 13 are devoted to Chinese subjects, including a funerary procession, the celestial bureaucracy, temple sculptures and ornaments, Lamas, punishments, Jesuit missionaries, magicians and sorcerers. Japan, Iran, Africa, the Lapp cultures of the Arctic and others are also included. The North American plates include Canada, Carolina and Virginia. Picart fastidiously researched the exotic scenes he illustrated, combining firsthand description from commercial travellers with published accounts (including de Bry, Kircher, Linschoten and Simon de Vries).

This Paris edition of 1807-1810 has been considerably enlarged to some 12 volumes, with 55 plates additional to the ‘standard’ first Dutch edition of Abraham Moubach. The additional plates are not signed by Picart and would have been too dangerous to print in the early eighteenth-century. These include occult subjects, divination, and the black arts. One particularly gruesome plate depicts

a black Sabbath, with witches and demons devouring small children under Lucifer’s watchful gaze.

Significantly, this edition has been enlarged with information from then recent exploration in the Pacific. The tenth volume treats the ceremonies of Oceania, including fascinating material on cults of death, taboo, and social behaviours including tattooing, with entries on New Zealand, Tahiti, Hawaii, the Pelew Islands, Easter Island, Nootka Sound and Tierra del Fuego. A paragraph on New Holland (X, p.37) has the authors unable to describe any religious cults in the ‘largest island of the universe’ as no religious behaviour has so far been observed, though the inhabitants are clearly cannibals (!). The sources of information acknowledged in this South Seas section include Cook, Banks, Bougainville, Vancouver, La Pérouse, La Borde, Forster, Wilson and Keate.

Despite the specific early references to these countries this significant “South Seas edition” is not recorded by any of the nationalistic bibliographers including Ferguson, Bagnall, Forbes and O’Reilly-Reitman. $9000

[RATTLESNAKE] HUXLEY, Thomas Henry.

Photographic Carte de visite portrait of T.H. Huxley.

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Carte de visite measuring 94 x 60 mm, blank margins neatly trimmed (no loss of image) else fine. London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company, circa 1880.

Veteran of the Rattlesnake, friend of Darwin

Engaging carte de visite of Professor Thomas Huxley, one of the pre-eminent naturalists of Victorian England who championed the evolutionary theory propounded by Charles Darwin throughout his professional career.

Huxley is also an important figure in Australian natural history as he accompanied the government biologist John Macgillivray aboard the Rattlesnake scientific survey of 1846-50. This expedition, under the command of Captain Owen Stanley, travelled north along the coast of north Queensland and through the Barrier Reef before exploring coastal New Guinea and the Louisiade archipelago. During his time in Australian waters Huxley speculated on concepts related to biology and evolution, so much so that he became a stauch advocate and defender of Darwin upon returning to Britain. $850

[SCOTTISH MARTYRS] PALMER, Thomas Fyshe.

A Narrative of the Sufferings of T.F. Palmer, and W. Skirving, during a voyage to New South Wales, 1794, on board the Surprise transport…

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Octavo, a good copy in old half calf with marbled sides, spine repaired. Cambridge, Printed by Benjamin Fowler, for W.H. Lunn et al. 1797.

Mutiny on the Surprise by a friend of John White’s

Rare first edition of the turbulent voyage of the convict ship Surprise, a detailed and interesting account written by one of the Scottish Martyrs, a political thinker considered ‘probably the most cultured of those who came to New South Wales in the early years of settlement’ (ADB).

Unlike the more commonly seen publications relating to the trials of the Martyrs printed in Scotland in the earlier 1790s, this work is a detailed description of events on board the Surprise, a convict vessel sent to New South Wales in 1794.

The account includes fascinating letters and petitions sent by Palmer and his colleagues written and dated from Sydney Cove.

Influenced by the strong anti-Jacobin feelings of the time, Palmer and Skirving were alleged to have tried to seize the ship and sail it to France. ‘Contains the story of the inhuman treatment of Palmer and Skirving by Captain Campbell, master of the Surprise, following the malicious discovery, by [Scottish Martyr] Maurice Margarot, a fellow convict, of a sham plot for capturing the ship. Depositions of the surgeon and members of the New South Wales Corps against Campbell are included’ (Ferguson). In Sydney Palmer became a much-respected merchant and advocate for exploration. This narrative was taken back to England by Surgeon John White and prepared for publication by Palmer’s friend, Jeremiah Joyce.

This rare first edition is not often offered for sale. Perhaps rather overlooked, it should take its place among other great convict publications such as George Thompson’s Slavery and Famine (1794), Thomas Watling’s fabulously rare Letters from an Exile (1794), and Thomas Muir’s Histoire de la tyrannie (1798). $5500 Ferguson, 254.

[SEAMAN’S UNION AUSTRALIA].

Australian Overseas Fleet Mock $55 bill.

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Colour printed note measuring 168 x 88 mm., small closed tear to top edge, otherwise very good. Sydney, SUA, 1984.

Cook the strike-breaker

Mock Australian banknote printed by the Seaman’s Union of Australia to raise awareness of foreign shipping ownership in Australia. Based on the original paper $50 banknote, this $55 mock up likewise depicts Captain Cook and the Endeavour. The figure of $55 represents the per capita ownership of every citizen in the Australian National Line, an international shipping agency then owned by the Australian Government. The reverse of the note details the concerns of the union alongside a foreign shipowner dressed as a pirate. $220

[SOLANDER] ANONYMOUS “Dr. Solander” Portrait Silhouette.

Well preserved portrait silhouette in ink on oval cream card measuring 80 x 105 mm., inscribed ‘Dr. Solander’, mounted on small sheet of blue tinted laid paper with portion of unrelated decorative calligraphy to the rear, framed. before, 1800.

Friend of Banks, Endeavour veteran

Attractive contemporary portrait silhouette, a scarce and most unusual memento of Daniel Solander (1733-1782), student of Linnaeus, companion of Sir Joseph Banks aboard the first voyage of Captain Cook and prominent member of the London scientific elite. Silhouettes were a popular Georgian pastime, and this example is a rare survival.

After extended study with the famous Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, Solander arrived in England in 1759 to promote the revolutionary new system of classification. In this role he was remarkably successful, and within four years was appointed to the British Museum, to rearrange the natural history collection. The following year he was elected to the Royal Society.

Solander developed a long-lasting friendship with Sir Joseph Banks, who asked him to join the voyage of the Endeavour in 1768, as one of his team of naturalists. Between them, Banks and Solander collected over 1400 plant species which were new to science, including many from the east coast of Australia. As a mark of esteem, Captain Cook named one of the headlands of Botany Bay “Point Solander” (nowadays Cape Solander) in his honour. Upon return to England, Solander was a lion of the London intellectual and scientific elite, and won the coveted assignment of Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum. He also acted as Banks’ librarian at Kew, and was responsible for naming many of the new plant specimens sent to the Royal Botanic Gardens within the novel Linnaean taxonomy. $3750

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[TAHITI] ADAMS, Henry.

Memoirs of Arii Taimai E Marama of Eimeo, Teriiere of Tooarai, Teriinui of Tahiti, Tauraatua I Amo. 22 Quarto, folding map, a fine uncut copy in original blue cloth with gilt label, bookplate. Paris, privately printed, 1901.

Tahitian aristocracy explained Scarce history of Tahiti based on the testimony Arii Taimai, a surviving member of the Tahitian aristocracy.

Born in 1824, Arii Taimai was the grand-daughter of Tati, paramount chief of the Papara district of Tahiti.

American historian Henry Adams arrived in Tahiti in 1891, where he had the good fortune to meet with Arii Taimai, a matriarch ‘pleasantly garrulous, full of legends her father had taught her… She had also been adopted by the widow of Pomare II, and had spent nearly the whole of her life suspended in the web of rhetoric about dominance and legitimacy of Tahitian lines and titles’ (Dening, p.

278). Arii Taimai spoke to Adams through her daughter Marau who acted as an interpreter.

Upon returning to the United States, Adams wove her testimony into his own researches on Tahiti and in 1893 published a small number of copies. This is the second edition of 1901, privately printed in Paris on fine paper stock (several facsimile editions have since followed). In his bibliography of the library of Bjarn Kroepelien, bibliographer Rolf du Rietz comments on its scarcity and importance. He claims the memoirs ‘must certainly be regarded as one of the finest items in the collection. Only a very few copies were printed, and these are now mostly to be found in public institutions’.

From the library of American novelist Louis Auchincloss. $3850

Dening ‘Mr Bligh’s Bad Language’, pp. 277-279; Kroepelien, 4; not in the catalogue of the Hill collection; O’Reilly-Reitman, 6593.

[TASMAN] VAN BOEKEREN, G.R. Voormeulen.

Reizen en Ontdekkingstogten van Abel Jansz Tasman, van Lutkegast…

Small slim octavo, three plates, a few spots but mostly excellent; in the original blue printed stiff wrappers a little discoloured, neatly rebacked to match. Groningen, A.L. Scholtens, 1849.

Tasman for young readers

Uncommon edition of the journals of Abel Tasman, here condensed and edited for use by younger readers. This copy is well preserved in the original printed wrappers and contains three skilfully printed lithographic plates. These depict Amsterdam Island, and also the first contact between Europeans and the Maori at “De Moordenaars-Baii” (Murderer’s Bay, now renamed Golden Bay located at the northwest point of the South Island). Of special interest given Tasman’s early Australian landfall is the bucolic scene of Tasmanian Aborigines, here depicted in a style reminiscent of the work of nineteenth-century French voyage illustrators such as Charles-Alexandre Lesueur and Louis de Sainson. $1875

23

[TERRES AUSTRALES] JESUITS. La Rédacteur véridique.

24

Duodecimo, 71 pp., very good, untrimmed, in attractive contemporary marbled paper wrappers. [probably Paris], Àlethopolis, dans les Terres Australes, 1762.

“Dans les Terres Australes…”

Rare: one of a small but intriguing number of eighteenth-century books to use a bogus Pacific imprint to avoid prosecution and lend an air of exotic glamour.

The work is the first edition of an anonymous Jesuit defence against the French suppression of the order, with an imprint prudently concealed in the lands of the southern oceans. It consists of a point for point refutation of the official case put against the Jesuits in 1762.

The use of phoney Australasian imprints would make an interesting study. The most obvious that springs to mind is one of the poetic attacks on Sir Joseph Banks and his liaisons in Tahiti, which sports the imprint Batavia “for Jacobus Opano” (An Epistle from Mr. Banks), while another is the strange Omai fantasy by the Graf von Dyrhn, Beylage zu dem Jahre 2240, published in “Kokos”, by the grand-ducal Australian Printer in 1781. $975

[TIERRAS AUSTRALES] [CALLOT, Jacques].

Don Miguel Zorrero Tuerto Cavallero de las Trencadas de capatos… Governador en las Tierras Australes desconocidas.

Engraving, 280 x 180 mm., printed from two plates; fine, mounted and framed. [Germany], circa 1720.

What would Whitlam do? First GG of the unknown southland Fine portrait of the man with the claim to be the earliest holder, real or imaginary, of the sometimes troubled office of the Governor-General of Australia. “Don Miguel Zorrero Tuerto”, in this caricature in the style of Jacques Callot, is claimed as the grandfather of Don Quixote and the governor of “Tierras Australes desconocidas”.

This rare engraving is from the series “Il Calloto resuscitato oder Neu eingerichtes-Zwerchen Cabinet”, published in Germany at the beginning of the eighteenth-century. The work was the most visible of a widespread series of copies of the grotesques published by Callot in the 1600s, which had spawned imitations in media as diverse as porcelain tiles and marzipan cakes. The connection to Callot here is putative and, as Wilhelm Fraenger has pointed out, if it were not for the use of his name in the title no connection would be apparent (Callots Neueingerichtetes Zwergenkabinett, Zurich, 1922).

$2500

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[TRANSPORTATION] Northumberland. A Calendar of the Prisoners, In the Gaol of our Sovereign Lord the King…

26 Broadside measuring 523 x 417 mm., wove paper watermarked 1816, folded, excellent condition. Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1819.

Large broadside: Transported for 7 years A striking visual display of English justice during the transportation era, listing the conviction and punishment of prisoners tried at the Newcastle-upon-Tyne assizes on 14 August 1819.

Court calendars such as this fine example were published as public notices detailing the convictions, punishments and sentencing of persons appearing before the assizes. This calendar reports the conviction of eight men tried at the assizes that day, in addition to the punishments allotted to another five. Here we read the fate of one Robert Brown, aged 35 years and convicted of larceny, who is to be ‘transported to such Part of his Majesty’s Dominions beyond the Seas…for the Term of seven Years.’

The crimes of other convicts are described in some detail, and include counterfeiting, assault of a gentleman upon the King’s Highway for his silver watch, theft of silver and bank-notes from a Friendly Society and the robbery of textiles and plush velvet cushions from a church. The most prominent list of charges belong to one Ralph Hush, also aged 35 years, who is charged with a string of livestock thefts, including one instance where Hush did ‘feloniously take and drive away… thirty Wedder Hogs, ten Ewes, and thirteen Lambs… as well as one Dinmont Sheep and two Lambs’ in all exceeding 80 shillings value. $1400

[TRANSPORTATION] WARD, H.G. and others.

The Debate upon Mr. Ward’s Resolutions on Colonization…

Octavo, 84 pp., manuscript presentation to R. Gainsford Esq. by “H.G.W.” (presumably the Ward of the title), title-page marked, with a few contemporary manuscript notes, bound without advertisements noted by Ferguson; very good in recent green cloth, familiar small stamp for Webster collection at rear. London, Ridgway, 1839.

Molesworth: Transportation as slavery

With a speech by the anti-transportation stalwart, Sir William Molesworth.

This uncommon book publishes five speeches delivered in British parliament concerning the sale of land in the Australian colonies, promoting an end to the longstanding system of land grants and reliance upon convict labour, and particularly attacking the leaving of land uncultivated (a subject much in the contemporary news because of the new South Australian colony).

Molesworth writes at length on the intrinsic problems of convict labour as effective slavery, denouncing what he called a system designed to encourage backwardness and corruption. $500 Ferguson, 2740.

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[UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER].

Formal portrait photograph of Captain Montagu Frederick O’Reilly, R.N. 28 Albumen paper print measuring 230 x 180mm, on card bearing graphite inscription “Capt.

Montagu O’Reilly”, very good. after 1855.

Artist at Port Essington

Rare portrait photograph of Captain Montagu O’Reilly, an artist and Royal Navy officer who served in northern Australian waters in 1839.

The son of a naval officer, O’Reilly enlisted in the Royal Naval College in February 1835 and two years later volunteered for service aboard HMS Pelorus, during which service he was in Australian waters between 1838-39. A good entry in the Dictionary of Australian Artists (online) refers to two important watercolours

by O’Reilly while he was in Australia, both of which are now in the Mitchell Libary. The first is a fine view of his ship HMS Pelorus running out of Port Jackson, and the second is a remarkable depiction of the ramshackle conditions at Port Essington where the Pelorus was wrecked in a cyclone.

O’Reilly later served in the Chinese Treaty Port conflicts of 1841 and on the African Station. In this portrait he stands decorated in full dress uniform pictured with a printed band reading ‘Fortifications of Sevastopol’ suggesting service in the Crimean campaign of 1854-55, and helping date the portrait.

This nineteenth-century albumen print is taken from an earlier daguerreotype or tintype, the location of which does not appear to be recorded. No other portrait of O’Reilly seems to be recorded. $2200