A BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN AND CAREFULLY ILLUSTRATED ASTRONOMY MANUSCRIPT

2. [ASTRONOMY] PELERIN, Henry Ferdinand (c.1772-1825).

Illustrated astronomy manuscript.

Octavo, 440 numbered pages including some blank sheets, with 4 mounted portraits en grisaille of Flamsteed, Roger Long, Laplace and Lalande, plus a mounted stipple-engraved portrait of Nevil Maskelyne, plus a total of 45 further full-page pen & ink illustrations, mostly with blue or sepia wash, illustrating the moon, star system, etc., the neatly-written text including table and calculations, plus a section entitled ‘To Bring a Transit Instrument into the Meridian by Gavin Lowe of Islington’, signed and dated by the author; with contemporary bone set square by W. & S. Jones, 30 Holborn, London, in pocket to front pastedown, contemporary diced calf with gilt silver clasps, gilt-titled ‘Stellae’ to spine, London, 1811.

This charming astronomical manuscript epitomises the strong intellectual interest in natural sciences in the later Enlightenment. The intricate presentation of manuscript data, the expertise in illustration, and the intellectual rigour shown in the composition of this Album, display Pelerin’s advanced understanding of astronomy.

Clearly a member of London’s intellectual movement of the later Enlightenment, Henry Ferdinand Pelerin was a London merchant of Huguenot background who married Sarah Ann Dawes in London in 1798 and was naturalised by private statute in the same year: “Henry Ferdinand Pelerin, of the Parish of Saint James, Westminster, in the County of Middlesex, merchant, son of Henry Pelerin, by Anne Elizabeth his wife, born at Hodimont in the Parish of Vender, in the Province of Limbourg in the Austrian Netherlands”. He became a member of the RSA, the Royal Society of Arts, then fully titled the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, whose aim was “to embolden enterprise, enlarge science, refine art, improve our manufacturers and extend our commerce”. He appears in their lists of members with various addresses (in 1799 he was at 7 Lower James Street, Golden Square; in 1800 at 12 New North Street, Red Lion Square; and from 1803 to at least 1808 at 32 Essex Street, Strand).

He was at some time based at Lloyd’s coffee house, the well-attended venue where men would meet for conversation and commerce which ultimately became the massive insurance market. We know that he was there as, sadly, the notice of his bankruptcy in June 1822 described him as an insurance broker of “Lloyd’s Coffee House, in the City of London”. The coffee house aspect of Lloyd’s would suit what we can deduce from his manuscript – that he was an intelligent man with an enquiring mind and a scientific brain – since traditionally the coffee houses offered a venue where men met to discuss politics, fashion, current events, and to debate philosophy and the natural sciences. Historians often associate English coffee houses, during the 17th and 18th centuries, with the intellectual and cultural history of the Enlightenment.

$22,500 [5000255 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at

RARE ORIGINAL VIEW IN MAURITIUS BY ONE OF BAUDIN’S ARTISTS

3. [BAUDIN VOYAGE] MILBERT, Jacques Gérard.

Original drawing of a scene in Mauritius…

Pencil sketch, 135 x 195 mm.; laid down on the original blue-paper mount, signed on the lower left of the mount and captioned. Mauritius, 1801-1803.

A striking pencil sketch by the Baudin voyage artist Milbert, done in the south-west of Mauritius after he had jumped ship from the Géographe on Baudin’s expedition to Australia and the Pacific in 1801.

Jacques-Gérard Milbert (1766-1840) had joined the Baudin expedition as one of the official artists but took advantage of an illness to be left in Port Louis when the ships sailed for New Holland (several of his shipmates commented that the artist had seemed depressed and anxious about the voyage). In a curious twist, he was still in Port Louis when the Géographe returned from Australia in 1803, and rejoined the expedition.

Back in France, Milbert was given the task of overseeing the publication of the plates for Péron and Freycinet’s official account (1807-1816), and also wrote his own companion account, the Voyage Pittoresque of 1812, a work of great significance for the natural history of the region, in which he described himself as both a Baudin artist and the “directeur” of engravings.

In his book Milbert wrote that during his time on the island he made two long expeditions in the south-east, and was overawed by the rugged wonder of the landscape, particularly in the locality of the present scene, along the small and remote Rivière du Tamarin with its “plusieurs cascades magnifiques.” He poetically recounted how in the region one travelled to the sound of the blows of the axes clearing a path through the liana which enveloped the trees, and how many of the larger trees appeared to have been thrown down by nature to serve the weaker and parasitic vegetations, and to nourish them in the otherwise barren earth: as a description of the present scene this could scarcely be bettered.

The sketch showcases Milbert’s particular skill in rendering botanical scenes and makes an important addition to the rather slender group of known works by him, particularly relating to his time in the Indian Ocean. Of the three men in the clearing, the seated figure at far left in a hat is likely to be Milbert himself, given that a similar figure with a palette also appears in many of his finished engravings.

On an intimate scale and full of botanical detail, this sketch makes a fascinating counterpoint to the great engraved views of his book, most obviously one showing the main waterfall at the nearby “Cascade du Tamarin”, but also to several others which show slaves labouring to fell trees and mill logs.

Provenance: North American source, believed to derive from the same original source as a Lesueur drawing described by us elsewhere and to have been among the archive left in America by Milbert.

$12,500 [4504851 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at

The First Almanac Published In Tasmania

4. BENT, Andrew.

The Van Diemen’s Land Pocket Almanac for the Year of Our Lord MDCCCXXIV…

Duodecimo, 96pp; old limp card wrappers, neatly rebacked, and preserved in a blue cloth book form box. Hobart Town, Andrew Bent, 1824.

The first Tasmanian almanac and extremely rare: an historical, first-hand account of Tasmanian cultural, economic and social mores compiled by an intelligent observer, a founding father of the Australian free press. Described by Ferguson as “extremely rare”, this copy of the important almanac comes from the celebrated, handpicked collection of the late Quentin Keynes.

We can trace only one other copy of the First Almanac offered for sale over the past hundred years; in 1929 a copy was offered by the Museum Book Store London for twenty five pounds (catalogue 114, item 611).

Andrew Bent, printer, publisher and newspaper proprietor, is celebrated for having established the first successful newspaper in Tasmania, the first Australian newspaper to be printed free from government control. Ironically, that freedom would lead to him becoming the first Australian publisher to be imprisoned for libel.

Bent’s first almanac is an atmospheric gem, discussing over fifty separate subjects that encompass colonial life and news for the inhabitants in the burgeoning colony. The Colonial Gardening section has a chapter on The Fruit Garden that reports “the produce of grapes in this country is astonishingly great, and they are exceedingly fine in quality; and this fruit will no doubt in the course of a few years be of considerable benefit to the colony, not only for making wines for our own consumption, but for exportation…” (p.31).

Bent arrived in Hobart in February 1812 after being charged with breaking and entering whilst still a teenager at Newgate prison in 1810. The harsh sentence was transportation for life to Australia. By 1815 his considerable skills as a printer were recognised, and he was appointed the Government Printer, soon receiving a conditional pardon with an absolute pardon following in 1821.

On Governor George Arthur’s arrival in Hobart in May 1824 Bent’s situation took a turn for the worse as the Governor saw no place for a free press in a convict colony. Bent fought strongly for permission to continue and indeed his claim was supported by the New South Wales. Governor Thomas Brisbane.

On 8 October 1824 the Hobart Town Gazette announced Bent's victory in an article which referred to Arthur as a 'Gideonite of tyranny'. This comment began years of disquiet and struggle for Bent against his protractors employing vengeful attempts to stop Bent's newspaper 'continuing to be the tool of a faction’. (Woodberry, 1972).

E. M. Miller wrote that "Andrew Bent is worthy of remembrance for his indomitable fight for the freedom of the press in Tasmania, and for his exceptional typographical productions in the form of newspapers, magazines, books and pamphlets, including the first literary works separately published in Tasmania". In 2018, Andrew Bent was inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame.

Provenance: An early inscription and occasional manuscript entries in an unidentified hand; Quentin Keynes (Christie’s London, 2004).

Ferguson, 988; Wilson, 229.

$26,500 [5000859 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at