Australian private collection

hordern house rare books

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manuscripts

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pa i n t i n g s

A selection of rare books from an Australian private collection

All prices are in Australian dollars Further catalogue images, descriptions & condition reports available by searching the unique number at hordern.com LEVEL 2, 255 RILEY STREET · SURRY HILLS · SYDNEY NSW 2010 · AUSTRALIA +61 2 9356 4411

· www.hordern.com · rare@hordern.com

1.

[ALMANAC] ROSS, James.

Hobart Town Almanack, and Van Diemen’s Land Annual for 1835.

Duodecimo, frontispiece and plate by Thomas Bock, owner’s armorial bookplate; a very good copy in contemporary patterned cloth, fragments of early paper spine label. Hobart, James Ross, 1834.

Rare Tasmanian almanac with a pertinent provenance A rare Tasmanian almanac of great significance to the early history of the colony. The volume contains Jorgen Jorgenson’s important ‘Shred of Autobiography’, what appears to be the first comprehensive index of Tasmanian flora by James Backhouse, and two engravings by Thomas Bock, including a scientific depiction of the platypus.

Copenhagen-born Jorgenson is most notorious for deposing the Danish governor of Iceland in 1809 and appointing himself head of government with the title ‘The Protector.’ Described by Marcus Clarke as ‘a human comet,’ Jorgenson and his career as a sailor, privateer, spy, revolutionary and explorer have formed the subject of several books, most of which rely on the swashbuckling self-portrait he paints here. Indeed, the audacity and grandeur of the Jorgenson’s tales approach MacDonald Fraser’s Harry Flashman (minus the confessions). Many relate to his time in Australia which he first reached around 1800 where he met Flinders and Baudin among others.

This copy in original binding has the bookplate of Robert James Shuttleworth (1810-74), the famous botanist and conchologist, whose specific interest would have been in the important 54-page ‘Index Plantarum, or an attempt towards a popular description of some of the most common and remarkable indigenous plants of Van Diemen’s Land’ compiled by James Backhouse and Ronald Campbell Gunn. Backhouse, a noted naturalist from a prominent English Quaker family, travelled widely in the colonies from 1832 to 1838, and spent three years in Tasmania working closely with Governor Arthur. Gunn, a high ranking official in the colonial administration who was later a member of the Legislative Council, was an important botanist who published widely and notably hosted Dumont d’Urville during his visit to Hobart. Most of the specimens collected by the two were sent to Kew. The two plates by Bock, show ‘The Teeth and Underjaw of the Platypus’ and a ‘Fish Caught in the Derwent.’ Both represent uncommon examples of early locally printed illustrations of Tasmanian wildlife. A noted engraver in London, Bock was transported to the penal colony in 1824 after being found guilty of drugging women. He was pardoned in 1832 and successfully established himself as a portrait artist. Several of his works are exhibited in the Tasmanian Museum and Gallery.

The almanac was compiled by James Ross, a government printer who published several gazettes and newspapers, and his thorough knowledge of the colony in the early 1830s is reflected throughout.

Ferguson notes three plates, but only two ever appear to have been included. $2700 Ferguson, 2021.

[4504458 at hordern.com]

2.

BLAXLAND, Gregory.

A Journal of a Tour of Discovery Across the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, in the Year 1813.

Second edition.

Duodecimo, 46 pp.; in a neat old binding of half calf and marbled boards, with the original printed front wrapper bound in. Sydney, Gibbs, Shallard & Co., 1870.

Second edition, published by Blaxland’s son The scarce second edition of this Australian exploration classic: the original account of the first great feat of Australian inland exploration. A series of previous attempts had failed to find a path into the hinterland and for twenty-five years the formidable barrier of the Blue Mountains had locked the settlers out of the interior.

A landholder in the Parramatta district, Blaxland set out in 1813 to conquer the Blue Mountain barrier and seek out new pastures to the west of the ranges. With his companions Lawson and Wentworth, he finally accomplished his mission on 31 May 1813, sighting rich lands from the summit of the mountain later called Mount Blaxland. From the top they could see forests and grasslands capable of supporting the colony’s herds for the next thirty years. Surveyor George Evans, on direct instructions from Macquarie, followed the path blazed

by Blaxland and broke through to the magnificent pastures of the Bathurst Plains; within a year William Cox had completed his road to the new territories. By 1815, a settlement had been made at Bathurst.

The first edition of this book is one of the great Australian rarities - about a dozen copies are known, and its value is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This second edition was published

by Blaxland’s son because, as he noted, copies of the first edition were “no longer to be had”. 34 years later Blaxland’s grandson was to publish a third edition (Maitland, 1904) because by then “the two previous editions [were] no longer obtainable”. $7250 Wantrup, 103c; Ferguson, 7133.

[4504468 at hordern.com]

3.

[BOUNTY] [BARROW, Sir John]

The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S. Bounty…

Small octavo, with a frontispiece and five etched plates; contemporary half calf. London, John Murray, 1831.

Barrow describes the “piratical” mutiny First and apparently the only authorised edition of a popular account of the Bounty story. The plates, after drawings by Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Batty, the army officer and prolific artist, include the familiar image of the “Residence of John Adams, Pitcairns Island” based on sketches

by Lieutenant Smith of HMS Blossom, which surveyed the island under Captain Beechey in 1825.

There is also a scene of Bligh’s open cutter in a stormy sea, while the scene in Matavai Bay is derived from an original by John Webber, the official artist on Cook’s third voyage.

The work also includes an account of the voyage and wreck of the Pandora as it brought back the mutineers from Tahiti, with a dramatic image of the wreck. Barrow’s work is completed with the letters written by Peter Heywood to his sister, as well as a description of the discovery of John Adams and the Bounty descendants on Pitcairn Island by Captain Mayhew Folger in 1808.

Provenance: With the bookplate of Green Hammerton Hall, a splendid Yorkshire manor house until tragically demolished, like so many English country houses, in the 1950s.

$1225 Ferguson, 1415; Hill, 68; Kroepelien, 46; O’Reilly-Reitman, 573.

[4504370 at hordern.com]

4.

[BURKE & WILLS] BRITISH PARLIAMENT.

Australian Exploring Expedition. (Burke and Wills.)…

Foolscap folio, 91 pp., two lithographic maps with outline colour (one folding); a very good copy in recent full red morocco. London, Ordered by the House of Commons, to be printed, 28 March 1862.

The official British report on the fate of Burke and Wills An excellent copy of the important 1862 report on the fate of Burke and Wills: “the voracious Burke and Wills collector will find many other important early books of interest.

He should, for example, seek out a copy of… the very scarce House of Commons Paper printed in 1862” (Wantrup).

The report prints all manner of primary resources, including field diaries, John King’s narrative, reports from the contemporary newspapers, interviews, despatches, as well as letters written by Burke, Wills, and Howitt.

Taken together it is a most important contribution to the earliest history of the fateful expedition.

Both of the maps are printed by Henry Hansard. The first and most impressive is a “Map of the Eastern Part of Australia, Showing the route of Messrs. Burke and Wills, from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria”, which includes the routes of the main party, as well as the search expeditions of McKinlay and McDouall Stuart. The second is the “Map of Mr. McKinlay’s Route, In search of Messrs.

Burke and Wills; In Sepr. and Ocr. 1861.” $2450 Watrup, p.239.

[4504373 at hordern.com]

5.

[BURKE & WILLS] JACKSON, Andrew.

Robert O’Hara Burke and the Australian Exploring Expedition of 1860.

Octavo, title-page with engraved portrait of Burke, detailed folding map; early (contemporary?) dark green half calf. London, Smith, Elder and Co., 1862.

Letters and journals of Burke and Wills First edition, first issue. Jackson, who knew Burke personally and was an officer in the same regiment as Burke’s father, published this account in memory of his friend’s dead son. It forms a fascinating contemporary collection of letters, journal entries and other documents by members of the Burke and Wills expedition.

Jackson identifies himself as an Ensign ‘Serving in the same regiment with the head of the family to which belonged Robert O’Hara Burke’. He states his aim in publishing: ‘My task has been limited to arranging consecutively the letters and journals of the explorers, and forming the whole into a connected narrative of the progress and results of the Expedition…’. His personal attachment clearly justifies his partiality: ‘I have not been able to refrain from censuring the conduct of one of the party in particular, as well as vindicating Mr. Burke; who, in his character as Leader of the Expedition, presents a noble example of those qualities which are called for in a soldier, the voyager, and the pioneer of civilization.’ Jackson’s villain is George James Landells, dispatched to India to procure 24 camels for the expedition. Little is known of Landells who acrimoniously quarrelled with Burke before the expedition had passed through settled districts, resigned from the party and returned to Melbourne. $2250 Ferguson, 10857; Wantrup, 173.

[4504432 at hordern.com]

[BURKE & WILLS SEARCH EXPEDITION] BOURNE, George.

6.

Bourne’s Journal of Landsborough’s Expedition from Carpentaria, in search of Burke and Wills.

Octavo, 54 pp. (last blank), an excellent copy in the original printed yellow wrappers; preserved in a blue quarter calf box.

Melbourne, H. T. Dwight, 1862.

Rare account of the Queensland relief expedition Rare first edition: this alternative account of the Landsborough expedition - sent to locate Burke and Wills in Northern Australia - was written by the second-in-command George Bourne. The sole independent source on the expedition, ‘it must be considered an essential adjunct to Landsborough’s official narrative and every collector should seek out a copy’ (Australian Rare Books). Bourne’s narrative forms the only independent account of an inconclusive - and sometimes controversial - expedition that was well publicised by its leader. Bourne, an experienced bushman, had this narrative edited for the press by E.M. Curr, who in the process of preparing it for publication did not omit Bourne’s criticism of his erstwhile leader.

Bourne’s book was issued in two states by Melbourne publisher H.T. Dwight. This copy is the issue in yellow titling wrappers with advertisements for books by the Reverend Woods printed inside the front and rear covers. Not surprisingly, it is considerably harder to find than Landsborough’s narrative, especially in such crisp original condition. $2100 Wantrup,176a; Ferguson, 7303.

[4504372 at hordern.com]

[BURKE & WILLS SEARCH EXPEDITION] LANDSBOROUGH, William.

7.

Journal of Landsborough’s Expedition from Carpentaria, in search of Burke and Wills.

Octavo, engraved frontispiece and large folding map of Australia; original linen-backed pink printed card boards; bookplate of Captain Frederick Aarons; quarter morocco box. Melbourne, Wilson and Mackinnon, 1862.

First edition, first issue First edition, first of several issues, of the first public printing of Landsborough’s journals from the Burke and Wills relief expedition, featuring a splendid large map of the Australian continent marked with the routes of all major inland exploration attempts. The preface notes that “This pamphlet has been published for the purpose of furnishing in a concise form all the particulars connected with the expeditin in search of Burke and Wills, organised at Brisbane, by direction of the Royal Society of Victoria”.

Landsborough was unsuccessful in his search for traces of the forlorn Burke and Wills expedition, but he had a keen eye for good pastoral land. Indeed, prior to the formation of the Queensland relief expedition in 1861, he had been professionally employed in exploring and surveying the remote interior for private grazing interests. This training is reflected in his journal, and ‘Landsborough’s discovery of good pastoral land on his more extensive expeditions created greater contemporary interest and his journals were quickly made available to the public’ (Wantrup, p.241).

When Landsborough fell out with Frederick Walker, leader of the other Queensland relief expedition (and by many accounts a thoroughly unsavoury character), he proceeded south from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Cooper’s Creek. Accordingly, this journal records much of the territory encountered by Burke and Wills on their tragic journey northward.

Provenance: Captain Fredrick Aarons, with bookplate.

$1365 Ferguson, 11329; Wantrup, 174a.

[4504374 at hordern.com]

[BURKE & WILLS SEARCH EXPEDITION] VICTORIAN PARLIAMENT.

8.

Exploration Expedition. Letter from Commander Norman… [bound with] Report of Commander Norman, of H.M.C.S. “Victoria”…

Two reports bound together, foolscap folio, the first report with 52 pp. and three folding maps; the second 32 pp.; fine in recent quarter dark blue morocco by Sangorski. Melbourne, John Ferres, Governmewnt Printer, 1862.

Landsborough and Walker search: with the maps Two important Burke and Wills related reports, with the rare lithographic maps. The reports relate to two major relief parties sent in search of the missing explorers by Landsborough and Walker, and include the only contemporary printing of anything relating to Walker (Landsborough, a keener self-promoter, published his own account). The second report prints the coastal journal of Norman, captain of the Victoria. The Victoria had been sent to the Gulf of Carpentaria because of the belief that Burke and Wills were most likely lost in the far north. The first report includes three important and rare maps showing Albert River, Flinders River, and “Walker and Landsborough’s Routes”. Lithographed in Melbourne in April 1862, they were bound into only a limited number of copies, most probably prepared for parliamentarians and persons closely connected to the relief expedition.

Landsborough, a seasoned explorer, struck out from the Albert River, and ultimately crossed the continent via Coopers Creek and Menindie, an important expedition in its own right. At the same time, Frederick Walker went inland from Rockhampton. Walker had served as a superintendent of native police at Wagga, and had become a sort of vigilante, but he was the one who found traces of Burke’s encampment before returning to the east coast of Queensland on foot.

The second report prints the journal of Captain Norman, and is of interest for his reflections on coastal exploration by sea and land in the wake of Stokes and Gregory.

“For the Burke and Wills collector… Commander W. H. Norman’s 52-page Exploration Expedition. Letter from Commander Norman… and his 32-page Exploration Expedition. Report of Commander Norman…, printed by order of the Victorian Parliament in 1862, are an essential acquisition, comprising as they do not only Norman’s reports but also the reports of Landsborough and of Frank Walker, whose journal was not elsewhere published in separate form. A very desirable form of Norman’s papers is the special issue with three folding lithographed maps not found in the ordinary issue…” (Wantrup, p. 271). $3850 [4504376 at hordern.com]

9.

[BURKE & WILLS] VICTORIAN PARLIAMENT.

Burke and Wills Commission…

Foolscap folio, 104 pp., a fine and clean copy, edges rough-trimmed only, in quarter blue morocco by Sangorski. Melbourne, John Ferres, Government Printer, 1862.

‘A far greater amount of zeal than prudence…’

Official report of the Royal Commission appointed to investigate the Burke and Wills disaster: ‘now very scarce and of high interest’ (Australian Rare Books).

When news of the tragedy reached Melbourne, public interest in the affair reached near hysterical proportions, and a Royal Commission had been set up even before King returned to Melbourne.

The commissioners apportioned blame for the debacle three ways: the expedition’s over-enthusiastic (some would say incompetent) leader Robert O’Hara Burke; the careless overseer William Wright; and the indecisive Exploration Committee of the Royal Society of Victoria. Although it concluded that Wright appeared ‘to have been reprehensible in the highest degree’, Burke was also chastised for displaying ‘a far greater amount of zeal than prudence…overtaxing the powers of his party’, and also for his failure to keep a regular journal.

The appendices of this report, totalling some 28 pages, are of great historical interest as they print Burke’s instructions from the Exploration Committee, numerous despatches from Wright and Burke, a good part of the journals of Wright and Wills, the narrative of John King, and William Brahe’s report of June 1861. $2100 Wantrup, 167

[4504375 at hordern.com]

[BURKE AND WILLS] ROYAL SOCIETY OF VICTORIA. 10.

Progress Report of the Exploration Committee…

Foolscap folio, 7 pp., printed on blue paper; stitched but unbound as issued, folded for the original “Exploration Committee” envelope, also present. Melbourne, Mason and Firth, Printers, 1862.

Sixth Progress Report The important Sixth Progress Report issued after the adverse findings of the Royal Commission enquiring into the disastrous Burke and Wills expedition. This separate printing of the report is identifiable by its colophon on page 7, and considerably predates the collective printing of the reports in 1863, where the colophon appears on page 8. Self-justification was, of course, the reason for this advance separate issue of the Sixth Report. $575 See Ferguson, 15185; Wantrup, p. 239 for the later collective printing.

[4504501 at hordern.com]

11.

CHAMBERLAYNE, Rev. I. (ed.)

The Australian Captive; or, an Authentic Narrative of fifteen years in the life of William Jackman… a forced residence of a year and a half among the cannibals of Nuyts’ Land…

Octavo, frontispiece portrait and four plates by Orr of New York; an excellent copy in green polished half calf by Sangorski. London and Auburn USA, Sampson Low, Son and Co.; Derby and Miller, 1853.

London edition: “among the cannibals of Nuyts’ Land…”

An excellent copy of a terrific yarn, the life and adventures of “William Jackman”, said to have lived among the Aborigines of Nuyts Land in the Great Australian Bight as an “Australian Captive”. The work includes a detailed (and in parts surely fanciful) account of life after he survived a wreck in southern Australia and was taken in by a local tribe. The publisher has certainly gingeredup the account to capitalise on interest in Australia by including a long appendix on latest news from the goldfields.

This is what Ferguson called the “London edition”, but Ferguson is in error in calling for six plates: the five present here are the full complement. The plates include two portraits of Jackman after daguerrotypes (the first with him in western clothes, the second as a captive and showing what might be some scarification on his chest). $825 Ferguson, 8068.

[4504377 at hordern.com]

12.

COLLINS, David.

An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales.

Quarto, with a portrait frontispiece, two maps (one folding), 23 engraved plates (the three natural history plates coloured) and eight text vignettes (that of the emu coloured); old half calf binding. London, A. Strahan, for T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1804.

The posthumous second edition, revised by Collins’ widow, with additions to 1803 The second edition of Collins’ famous First Fleet account, a ‘detailed and informed record of all important transactions in the colony’ (Wantrup).

This edition includes considerable changes from the original two-volume edition. Collins’ wife, Maria, continued her husband’s revision and edited the book, completing it with new information available to the end of 1803. Collins’ earnings had been severely affected by his long service in New South Wales, and he had originally published his history of the colony in an attempt to eke out the family income. He and Maria decided to issue this cheaper edition to bring it up to date, and to reach new readers who could not afford the expensive two-volume edition.

The fine engraved plates are considered to be after the convict artist Thomas Watling, who worked for John White. $3750 Wantrup, 21.

[4504466 at hordern.com]

[CONVICTS & TRANSPORTATION] [BRITISH PARLIAMENT] 13.

Commitments, Trials, Convictions etc…

Foolscap folio, 130 pp.; in neat modern dark blue wrappers with printed label. London, Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 24 February 1817.

Compilation and analysis of sentencing reports Extensive reports, from all over England and Wales - from Assize courts, Quarter or General Sessions, and from Clerks of the Peace for Towns Boroughs and Cities - of the numbers of persons committed for trial, convicted and sentenced. This remarkably informative tabulated data is a rich source of material for the history of transportation and of the treatment of crime during the Macquarie period. Loosely inserted is a separate single leaf printing “A Statement of the Nature of the Crimes of which the persons were convicted, who had sentence of Death passed upon them, and of the number who were executed”, also printed for the British Parliament (22 March 1819). $2200 [4504481 at hordern.com]

[CONVICTS & TRANSPORTATION] BRITISH PARLIAMENT. 14.

Report from the Select Committee on Secondary Punishments [for 1831 & 1832].

Folio, the two reports bound together, 177pp. and 162pp. respectively; in a newat modern binding of half brown calf, spine lettered in gilt. London, Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 27 September 1831 & 22 June 1832.

With expert witnesses James Busby and Elizabeth Fry Two important reports on “secondary punishments”, the additional punishments meted out to repeat offenders already within the prison system (most famously within the Australian context Norfolk Island and Port Arthur). As a matter of course the reports include significant notice of transportation, inland settlement, the granting of land, and also relations with Aborigines.

The 1831 report includes printed interviews with any number of prominent settlers, notably the Sydney merchants James and William Walker, the vigneron and author James Busby, the Bigge-inspired coloniser Thomas Potter Macqueen, the South Australian promoter Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and Edward Macarthur (the son of John who spent a great eal of time in England). The report concludes with a fascinating overview of conditions experienced by the convicts in the 1820s, with some interesting discussions of the subject.

The 1832 companion report follows directly on, and it is valuable to have the two together. It begins with notice of the pressing urgency of further investigation and reform, before presenting its own series of interviews, including a repeat performance

by Busby. If anything, the new witnesses are an even more interesting lot, including the botanist Allan Cunningham and the magistrate John Stephen. For the first time several people involved with the prison hulks were called in, and even some prisoners were allowed to speak, including a remarkable interview with one “A.B.” who had been confined on the Hulk Retribution at Sheerness for six years awaiting transportation. The report is also significant for an early printing of a substantial interview with Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker reformer. $2250 Ferguson 1432,1543

[4504378 at hordern.com]

[CONVICTS & TRANSPORTATION] FITZROY, Governor, Sir Charles Augustus and William Charles WENTWORTH. 15.

Further Correspondence on the Subject of Convict Discipline…

Folio, 16 pp.; a good copy, uncut in modern green leather binding. London, William Clowes and Sons for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, April 1847.

The people of NSW against transportation Four petitions from the people of New South Wales opposing further transportation of convicted felons.

This report opens with a letter to the Secretary of State Earl Grey from Governor Charles Augustus Fitzroy, who writes that he revealed a private despatch from Grey to the Legislative Council of New South Wales in accordance with ‘the discretionary power you assign to me.’ Grey’s despatch concerned the revival of transportation to New South Wales, and not surprisingly its disclosure created a storm of public controversy. The report prints the conclusion of the Legislative Council, here summarised by William Charles Wentworth in eight pages. The extent of public dissatisfaction is reflected in four petitions printed here (which amassed a total of 8,349 signatories), raised in Sydney, Maitland, Liverpool and Parramatta. The Sydney petition attracted the vast majority of signatories, while the Parramatta petition gathered 327 signatories and Liverpool just 47. Assigned labour was diminishing, with important economic consequences for primarily agricultural settlements such as Liverpool and Parramatta. $885 Ferguson, 4515.

[4504365 at hordern.com]

[CONVICTS & TRANSPORTATION] HOWARD, John.

16.

The State of the Prisons in England and Wales…

Octavo, with ten folding engraved plates including seven highly detailed architectural plans; a superb copy in original condition, edges completely uncut, in original boards, spine lettered in ink preserved in a quarter morocco case. Warrington, William Eyres; and sold by T. Cadell… and N.Conant… London, 1780.

Prison reform in the 1780s A very fine copy of the second and best edition of John Howard’s exhaustive and highly influential examination of the prisons of Britain and Europe, considerably enlarged from the first edition of 1777 and with an additional seven engraved folding plates. Howard’s criticism of British gaols was contemporary with recent discoveries in the Pacific, marking it out as one of the fundamental works in the debate that would culminate in the establishment of the penal colony at Botany Bay. Howard’s study is a landmark in the history of criminology. Like his successor Jeremy Bentham, Howard took great interest in the architecture of prisons and demonstrated that an improvement of the penal environment could promote rehabilitation. The extended series of plates prepared for this edition includes seven detailed plans of existing prisons including Newgate and the Bastille.

The State of Prisons is a rich source of statistical data and detailed description alike. Interestingly, this second edition expands upon the condition of the Thames hulks based on a series of visits made in 1779.

Howard reports that the pursers’ weights were doctored for personal gain and that new rations of cloth and bedding had been issued specifically for his visits to the Justicia and her sister hulk the Censor. He reports horrific mortality rates on the hulk Justicia: between August 1776 and March 1778 a staggering 176 of the 632 prisoners had died. The appalling conditions and vice on the hulks led to their widespread condemnation and calls for transportation as a preferable state of affairs.

He draws comparisons between the elimination of scurvy at sea and maintaining the health of prisoners and refers to the scholarship of Sir John Pringle and James Lind, both eminent contemporary physicians of the scurvy problem. Tragically, Howard would die in the Crimea in 1790 from the very prison fever he sought to eradicate. $3400 Garrison & Morton, 1598; Goldsmiths’, 12059; HBS, 7975; Printing and the Mind of Man, 224; Rothschild, 1163-1164.

[4504469 at hordern.com]

[CONVICTS & TRANSPORTATION: MOLESWORTH REPORT] 17.

Report from the Select Committee on Transportation…

Folio, [ii], i-[l], 330, 44 pp.; with an additional series title-page (Reports from Committees 1837-8…

Sixteenth Volume); complete with errata slip, in a neat modern binding of green cloth with printed paper label. London, Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 3 August 1838.

Molesworth sinks transportation: the 1838 report The last major parliamentary report in the history of transportation, and the work which precipitated the demise of the convict system in eastern Australia. The sheer scale of the report, and the number of witnesses called, makes this one of the most important reports on colonial Australia.

Known by the name of its chairman, the British politician and parliamentary reformer Sir William Molesworth (1810-1855), the Molesworth report was deeply critical of the convict system as intrinsically unfair, inefficient, expensive and morally problematic. Upon publication the findings fuelled popular movements against transportation both in Australia and Britain, where it provided impetus to penal reformers. Although transportation continued for years to come the vast majority of convicts were diverted from New South Wales and sent to Van Diemen’s Land. Significantly, the committee exposed outrageous abuses of recidivist felons that shamed English moral sensibility and led to further reforms such as Captain Maconochie’s Norfolk Island experiment. So began the era of prison building in Victorian Britain, with penitentiaries planned as places of both punishment and moral rehabilitation.

Provenance: Law Society (UK) with their library-stamps.

$2750 Ferguson, 2500.

[4504398 at hordern.com]

[CONVICTS & TRANSPORTATION] TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE. 18.

First Report from the Committee… for the effectual transportation of felons…

Foolscap, 20 pp., very good, neatly disbound; preserved in a red quarter morocco solander case. London, 9 May 1785.

The “legal basis” for transportation Very uncommon: crucial discussions leading to the establishment of transportation to a colony at Botay Bay. This is the first report of the committee appointed to investigate transportation, and which ultimately led to the founding of the “thief colony” in New South Wales. Ferguson described the actual Act “for the effectual transportation of Felons” - whose execution the Committee was set up to investigate - as the “legal basis” of transportation.

‘By April 1785, though Pitt, the Prime Minister, denied it, the government seemed to have decided on an African scheme… The result was a violent parliamentary attack, led by Edmund Burke, and the appointment of another Commons Committee to investigate. In evidence to it, Evan Nepean, the Under-Secretary, said that though the River Gambia plan ‘was under the contemplation of government and preferred to every other’, it had not been ‘finally resolved on…’’ (Shaw, Convicts & the Colonies, p. 46).

This is the report itself, of central importance for the transcript of an interview of Evan Nepean, who was interviewed extensively and responded regarding the hulks (Censor, Dunkirk, Ceres), the nature of the convictions of the proposed transportees, and in detail about the River Gambia - or “Lemane” - plan, including his admission that the British had no territorial rights in the region.

The African merchant John Barnes gave evidence regarding his experience on the River Gambia, and was matter-of-fact about the problems of climate, as was John Nevan, a captain in the African trade, who had been there for six months in 1784, and who ‘owed his own Preservation to Bitters and Bark.’ Thomas Nesbitt had traded there in 1780 and was voluble about the local tribes, while the English naturalist Henry Smeathman told tales of his own experience in Sierra Leone and gave some long overdue practical advice (‘if 200 convicts were left on an Island in the River Gambia, without any Medical Assistance than what they might give to each other, not One in 100 would survive the first Six Months…’). Other experts were the Army Surgeon John Boon, Sir George Young (ultimately a supporter of Botany Bay), Commodore Thompson, and two members of the Committee, Call and Sturt. Little surprise, therefore, that the Committee condemned the proposed River Gambia colony, and ultimately stated its preference for the West Coast of Africa and the colony in Sierra Leone, the failure of which was recently studied in Emma Christopher’s A Merciless Place.

Early documents like this relating to the establishment of New South Wales and the institution of transportation are important and often, like this example, rare. $4400 Ferguson, 4a (note).

[4504408 at hordern.com]

19.

COOK, Captain James.

A set of the three voyage accounts…

Together eight volumes, quarto, and two folio Atlases; uniformly bound in contemporary polished diced russia leather, decorated in blind and gilt, atlases in half binding with marbled paper sides matching the endpapers of the text volumes; all volumes neatly respined. London, 1773-1784.

Cook’s voyages: with the extra atlas, and uniform contemporary provenance An attractive complete set of Captain Cook’s three voyages in their large official accounts, with uniform contemporary provenance. The series of official Cook narratives is the cornerstone of any collection of books relating to the Pacific. Illustrated with marvellous engravings based on the work of the official artists on the voyages, including Parkinson, Hodges, and Webber, the series stands as the great monument to Cook’s achievements. This handsome set has the first and third voyages in their “best” editions and the rarely-seen feature of a separate Atlas to the second voyage. Of the total of 204 engraved plates and maps that illustrate the three voyage accounts, 128 of them are contained in the separate Atlas volumes where they can be seen to best advantage in the larger format.

The first voyage is in its second and best edition, complete with the “Directions for placing the cuts” and the “Chart of the Straights of Magellan” (both of which are usually missing in the first edition), and with the new Preface containing Hawkesworth’s virulent 8-page reply to Dalrymple’s whining reviews of the first edition, and the whole volume revised by the voyage’s astronomer William Wales.

The second voyage, here in its third edition, has the very desirable separate atlas containing the wonderful series of plates and maps (usually bound into the text volumes) printed on thicker paper than usual, and unusually fresh and bright. Only the largest of the maps are folded, and the views and botanical plates are all the more impressive for their being in uncreased state.

The third voyage is in its second and best edition, preferred for several reasons, including the fact that the Royal Society medal awarded to Cook posthumously in 1784 appears on the title-pages; the printing was done by Hughs (rather than Strahan who printed the first edition) with the wording of the title-pages slightly modified and the text itself entirely re-set. Isaac Smith presenting a set on behalf of Cook’s widow in 1821 noted that ‘I am desired by Mrs Cook… to request your acceptance of the 4 books sent herewith being her Husbands last Voyage round the World, as a mark of her respect… the letter press of the second edition being much superior to the first both in paper & letter press’ (quoted by Forbes, Hawaiian National Bibliography, 85). King George III’s copy of the official account, preserved in the British Library, is also an example of this second edition.

Provenance: Uniform provenance in all volumes of Ebenezer John Collett (1755-1833, MP for Grampound, Cornwall from 1814 to 1818), with armorial bookplates; Francis Markham, with bookplates.

$72,000 Beddie, 650, 1226, 1552; Hill, 782, 358, 361; Holmes, 5, 24, 47.

[4504379 at hordern.com]

20.

[COOK: FIRST VOYAGE] PARKINSON, Sydney.

A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas…

Large quarto, with frontispiece portrait, a map and 26 plates; completely uncut and partly unopened; an exceptionally large copy in its original binding of blue-grey paper boards, plain paper spine carefully renewed; in a folding cloth case. London, Printed for Stanfield Parkinson, the Editor, 1773.

Uncut in original boards, and larger than ever.

A really exceptional copy of the first edition of the most handsome of the unofficial accounts of Cook’s first voyage. Copies of the first edition of Parkinson are invariably quite large with generous margins (and are often misleadingly catalogued as “Large paper” - in fact there were no “small paper” copies, only copies cut down by the binder), but the book is virtually never seen as here, completely uncut in its simple original binding. The spine has been replaced with appropriate plain paper. For the record, this copy measures 380 x 95 mm (binding) and 362 x 292 mm (bookblock).

Parkinson, the son of a Quaker brewer of Edinburgh, was apprenticed to a draper when his ability for drawing ‘flowers, fruits and other objects of natural history’ first attracted the attention of Sir Joseph Banks. Banks engaged him as botanical artist on Cook’s first voyage, and he went on to produce an important series of magnificent botanical and natural history drawings, and was the first professional artist to set foot on Australian soil. He died at the end of the voyage, en route from Batavia to the Cape of Good Hope.

Parkinson was responsible for the original drawings for twenty-three of the twenty-seven plates here. His original artwork and these splendid engravings made from it represent one of the chief visual sources for Cook’s first voyage, and one of the first views European observers had of such South Pacific scenes. Parkinson’s journal of the voyage is plain and unaffected, and in the words of its editor ‘its only ornament is truth, and its best recommendation characteristic of himself, its genuine simplicity’. Curiously, as the botanical drawings were retained by Banks, none of his botanical drawings appear in his own account, and not until recent years has the world at large learned of Parkinson’s genius as a botanical artist.

The book contains extensive accounts of New Zealand and Australia, and has some of the earliest natural history observations on the region. Parkinson’s image of the natives of New Holland, as well as his depiction of the kangaroo, form fine engravings in this publication. His journal also has some of the earliest natural history observations on the region, and in fact contains the first published use of the word kangaroo (as “kangooroo”, p. 149). When Parkinson drew the kangaroo he noted that ‘In gathering plants today I myself had the good fortune to see the beast so much talked of, tho but imperfectly; he was not only like a grey hound in size and running but had a long tail… what to liken him to I could not tell…’ (Endeavour River, 27 June, 1770). Six weeks later, on 4 August while still at Endeavour River, Cook recorded that ‘…the Animal which I have before mentioned is called by the natives Kangooroo or Kanguru’.

Provenance: Early continental bookseller’s label on front board.

$28,500 Beaglehole, I, pp. ccliii-cclv; Beddie, 712; Davidson, ‘A Book Collector’s Notes’, pp. 54-56; Hill, 1308; Hocken, p.12; Holmes, 7; Kroepelien, 944; New Zealand National Bibliography, 4466; O’Reilly-Reitman, 371.

[4504475 at hordern.com]

[DARLING: SUDDS AND THOMPSON CASE] PARLIAMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN. 21

Papers Explanatory of the Charges brought against Lieut. Gen. Darling, by William Charles Wentworth, Esq.

Folio, 60 pp.; quarter calf, bookplate.

London, Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 1 July 1830.

Freedom of the Press in Sydney A gritty insight into colonial politics of the 1820s, pitting individual liberty and the freedom of the press against the power of Governor Ralph Darling.

As this publication records, William Charles Wentworth had attacked Darling for his contentious treatment of two soldiers of the New South Wales regiment, Sudds and Thompson. The argument was conducted largely in the pages of Wentworth’s Australian newspaper, to which Darling responded with attempts to further curb the freedom of the press, imposing stamp duties on Sydney newspapers, and bringing libel charges against private citizens.

These actions polarised the judiciary against the governor, and Darling came to believe that the judges acted against him in collusion with Wentworth.

This report of 1830 ostensibly published all of the relevant documents; however, the Colonial Office was partial to Darling’s case and edited the documents in a manner that misrepresented the affair, omitting a crucial letter from Wentworth to Sir George Murray. When this omission was revealed the Colonial Office was forced to publish the entire text of the Wentworth impeachment (as a parliamentary paper in 1832). Some years later in 1835 Darling was cleared of Wentworth’s charges by a Select Committee of the House of Commons.Provenance: The Rodney Davidson copy, with bookplate. $2400 Ferguson, 1355.

[4504482 at hordern.com]

[DARLING: SUDDS AND THOMPSON CASE] PARLIAMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN. 22.

Report from the Select Committee on the Conduct of General Darling, while Governor of New South Wales…

Folio, 168 pp., complete with the original blue printed wrappers bound in at end; edges uncut; a very attractive copy in a good modern binding of half blue morocco. London, Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 1 September 1835.

Governor Darling exonerated A very good copy of this important report, detailing the sometimes controversial governorship of Ralph Darling, and of particular importance for the investigation into the Sudds and Thompson trial, the cause célèbre which divided Sydney, after Darling personally intervened to inflict harsh penalty on two private soldiers.

Darling’s chief attackers were William Charles Wentworth (and the Australian) and Captain Robison. ‘An extremely important source of information with reference to this famous case’ (Ferguson).

The Select Committee cleared Darling of wrongdoing, and here publishes their findings along with the testimonies provided during the investigation. While the report completely exonerated Darling, it nonetheless prints in exhaustive detail the case against him, notably the interviews done with Captain Robert Robison of the Royal Veterans then serving in Newcastle. Robison protested the severity of the punishment, and saw it as a chance to make political capital against Darling, but was subsequently court-martialled and cashiered. The report, therefore, also goes into questions relating to grants of crown land, mismanagement of funds for the New South Wales Veteran Companies, and the freedom of the press. $2700 Ferguson, 1960.

[4504381 at hordern.com]

[DARLING: SUDDS AND THOMPSON CASE] [WENTWORTH, William Charles] 23.

Mr. Wentworth’s Letter of Impeachment… [contained in] A Return of all the Letters addressed by… the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in reply to Governor Darling’s Despatches.

Folio, 55 pp. and docket title; in a modern binding of quarter leather. London, Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 20 July 1832.

Wentworth v Governor Darling One of the key pieces in the controversy over Governor Darling’s handling of the SuddsThomson case, an affair which embroiled the Governor along with key figures in the colony over nearly ten years. This government printing is notable for containing the very long (35 pages) “Letter of Impeachment” published by William Charles Wentworth in his newspaper The Australian. It was a key piece in Wentworth’s noisy and articulate fight against autocracy and his defence of the emancipists, though - as Michael Persse notes in his ADB article on Wentworth the ‘draft of ‘impeachment’ prepared by Wentworth against Darling did little damage to the governor’s reputation at the Colonial Office, but it certainly undermined Wentworth’s, so intemperate was its language’.

Darling served his full term as governor, ultimately vindicated though it had been a long battle. Wentworth threw an immense party on his Vaucluse estate to celebrate the Governor’s departure from the colony in 1831 where, so the newspaper reported, ‘upward of 4,000 persons assembled at Vaucluse to partake of Mr Wentworth’s hospitality and to evince joy at the approaching departure. The scene of the fête was on the lawn in front of Mr Wentworth’s villa, which was thrown open for the reception of all respectable visitants, while a marquee filled with piles of loaves and casks of Cooper’s gin and Wright’s strong beer, was pitched a short way off.

On an immense spit a bullock was roasted entire.

Twelve sheep were also roasted in succession; and 4,000 loaves completed the enormous banquet. By 7 p.m. two immense bonfires were lighted on the highest hill … Rustic sports, speeches, etc., etc., whiled away the night; and morning dawned before the hospitable mansion was quitted by all its guests’. $4750 Ferguson, 1193.

[4504447 at hordern.com]

[EUREKA STOCKADE] [PARLIAMENT OF VICTORIA] 24.

Collection of 13 Victorian Parliamentary Reports.

Folio, 13 publications bound in one volume; in fine condition, in a modern green leather binding, spine lettered in gilt. Melbourne, John Ferres, Government Printer, November 1854 to June 1858.

Remarkable collection of Eureka reports A fascinating collection of Victorian parliamentary papers relating to Ballarat and the Eureka Stockade. This bound volume collects 13 documents of various length (from 2 to 24 pages), all of which are in fine original condition. These reports form an important record of Australian goldfields history, recording and documenting the political and legal processes following the disturbances at Ballarat and subsequent uprising at the Eureka Stockade. Included is the 1854 report “Riot at Ballaraat” which prints testimony by key figures including Peter Lalor and Frederick Vern, and was published after the first disturbances but two weeks before Eureka.

The volume contains: 1. Riot at Ballaarat. (xv, 22 pp.) 21 November 1854.

2. Disturbances at Ballaarat. (5 pp.) 5 December 1854.

3. Copies of Correspondence respecting American Citizens who were supposed to have participated in the late riots at Ballaarat. (2 pp.) 7 March 1855.

4. Ballaarat Outbreak. Petition. (1 p.), 18 December 1855.

5. Claims for Compensation. Ballaarat. (23 pp.). 25 January 1856.

6. Claims for Compensation for Injuries and Losses Sustained during the Ballaarat Riots. (6 pp.). 10 January 1856.

7. Claims for Compensation. Ballaarat. Supplementary return to address. (1 p.). 25 January 1856.

8. Mr. B. S. Hassall. Claim for Compensation. (3 pp.). 22 February 1856.

9. Ballaarat Riots. Expenses of Troops and Police. (6 pp.).

17 March 1856.

10. First Report from the Select Committee of the Legislative Council on the Ballaarat Outbreak. (10 pp.). 12 March 1856.

11. Second Report from the Select Committee of the Legislative Council on the Ballaarat Outbreak. (iv, 3 pp.).

14 March, 1856.

12. Report from the Select Committee of the Legislative Council on Ballaarat Compensation, (Bentley’s Hotel). (iv pp.). 14 March, 1856.

13. Report from the Select Committee upon Ballaarat Riots - Bentley’s Hotel. (x, 16 pp.). 1 June 1858. $3400 [4504383 at hordern.com]

[EUREKA STOCKADE] [PARLIAMENT OF VICTORIA] 25.

Riot at Ballaarat. Report of the Board… together with the Evidence taken by the Board…

Foolscap folio, xv, 22 pp., in a good recent binding of half morocco, gilt lettering. Melbourne, John Ferres, Government Printer, 21 November 1854.

Printed a fortnight prior to the Eureka Stockade A fundamental report relating to Ballarat and the Eureka Stockade: this government report on the events which led to the burning down of the Eureka Hotel prints testimony by key figures including Peter Lalor and Frederick Vern.

The report is dated 21 November 1854, just two weeks before the battle of the Eureka Stockade on 3 December, and prints the testimony of more than fifty witnesses examined under oath at Bath’s Hotel in Ballarat between 2-10 November. Their testimony spoke to widespread corruption and abuse of power by police at Ballarat and the goldfields (especially relating to the sale of sly grog), and also includes accusations regarding the burning of the Eureka Hotel and the murder of James Scobie, incidents that led directly to the uprising.

The final appendix to the report prints the statement of the police magistrate John Dewes, denying allegations he received bribes from Mr. Bentley, owner of the Eureka hotel. Nonetheless, Lieutenant Governor Sir Charles Hotham ordered Dewes be immediately dismissed for corrupt practices and that criminal proceedings commence against Sergeant Major Thomas Milne. $1425 [4504385 at hordern.com]

[EUREKA STOCKADE] WESTGARTH, William, John Pascoe FAWKNER, and others.

26.

Gold Fields’ Commission of Enquiry. Report of the Commission…

Folio, lxxii, 366 pp., a fine copy in deep blue polished half calf by Sangorski, spine lettered in gilt with raised bands. Melbourne, John Ferres, Government Printer, 29 March 1855.

Almost 400 pages on Eureka: the definitive report The Gold Fields Commission of Enquiry on the Eureka Stockade, whose members including William Westgarth and John Pascoe Fawkner, was appointed to determine the cause of the disturbances at Ballarat, and the resulting report is most desirable for the sheer volume of first-hand evidence printed.

The report covers the entire history of the Victorian goldfields, and examines the contentious issues of political rights and the license fee. The social condition of the fields, disparity of wealth, antagonism towards Chinese miners and rising discontent against the State are recurring themes. It is noteworthy for its unflinching criticism of the Victorian police.

The report comprises two parts. The first, of some 72 pages, presents the findings and conclusions of the Commissioners, and forms an in-depth critique of goldfields (mis)management resulting in the crisis at Ballarat and the Eureka Stockade. The grievances of the miners are seriously addressed – shortage of land and resources, price gouging, corruption, arbitrary decisions and coercion by police and magistrates, disputes between individual miners, and so forth.

Treatment of the fighting at Eureka is fairly evenhanded; sub-headings include ‘Premature violence of the authorities’, ‘Inhumanities on the occasion’ and ‘Share borne by foreigners’.

The second part prints individual testimonies, forming an invaluable historical resource of some 365 pages.

By the date of publication in March 1855, easy alluvial riches were increasingly elusive, and successful gold mining increasingly relied on costly quartz crushing and extraction processes. Hence this report comes at a crucial time in Australian goldfields history when individual prospectors and their families were losing ground, quite literally, to companies with the capital to extract gold from quartz mined deep underground. $1725 [4504384 at hordern.com]

27.

FALCONER, William.

The Shipwreck, A Poem.

Large octavo, with three steel-engraved plates and five finely engraved vignettes; a very large copy with wide margins in a splendid straight-grained red morocco binding (attributed to Edwards of Halifax) with elegant neoclassical gilt tooling. London, Printed for William Miller… by T. Bensley, 1804.

“Largest Paper”, binding attributed to Edwards of Halifax A splendid copy: an early hand has noted in ink “Largest Paper” at the start, probably indicating a special issue of this edition of William Falconer’s celebrated masterpiece.

This superb copy is in a splendid contemporary binding that the book’s previous owner, the collector John Hely-Hutchinson, attributed to the famous Edwards of Halifax. Significantly, this copy was at an earlier time in the library of the bibliophile Frances Richardson Currer, and has her bookplate. Crowned the ‘head of all female book collectors in Europe’

by Thomas Dibdin, Currer’s estate at Eshton Hall near Skipton was close to the workshop of Edwards of Halifax and certainly this splendid binding has his characteristic skill and finesse.

Originally published in 1762, The Shipwreck is a poem in three cantos chronicling the voyage of the Britannia from Alexandria to Venice and its shipwreck near Cape Colonna on the Greek coast. Falconer was a professional mariner who successfully combined a working knowledge of the sea within the tradition of romantic poetry. There is a generous appendix explaining the operation of a sailing vessel during a violent storm. One poignant reason for the popularity of Falconer’s book was that he was himself lost at sea when the Aurora was shipwrecked after leaving the Cape of Good Hope in 1769.

Falconer’s nautical knowledge is evident in his detailed footnotes explaining terms employed in the poem and also in his Marine Dictionary published in 1769. This edition also contains a biography of Falconer by James Stanier Clarke, fellow of the Royal Society and popular maritime writer. The fine and detailed illustrations, both plates and vignettes, are after drawings (now in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich) by Nicholas Pocock, the leading British maritime painter at the turn of the century. $2750 [4504386 at hordern.com]

[FIRST FLEET] ANONYMOUS, often mis-attributed to William Eden.

28.

The History of New Holland, from its First Discovery in 1616…

Octavo, with two folding maps handcoloured in outline; a most attractive copy in contemporary tree calf, the ornately gilt spine skilfully renewed. London, John Stockdale, 1787.

New South Wales described for First Fleeters First edition: a study of the Australian continent and the history of its discovery, only possible with the completion and publication of Cook’s first voyage. This is the essential precursor book for the First Fleet, the widely read description of Australia published to coincide with the departure of the Fleet for New South Wales, including a description of the planned penal colony and a description of the command of the settlement. Planning for the First Fleet had proceeded rapidly following Lord Sydney’s speech to the Lord Commissioners of the Treasury in August 1786. Not surprisingly, public interest in the radical scheme was considerable and the enterprising publisher John Stockdale rushed this book through the press to appease popular demand. The fine handcoloured maps detail the continent, Botany Bay and, most interestingly, the ‘Passage from England to Botany Bay in New Holland 1787’, showing the route that the Fleet must take.

In keeping with the public contention surrounding the issue of transportation to New South Wales, this book includes an extract on banishment derived from William Eden’s Principles of Penal Law. The inclusion of this extract has led to the traditional misattribution to Eden of the whole book, whose compiler in fact remains unknown to this day. The History of New Holland comprises a readable summary of information about Australia, including the early discovery of Western Australian coast and the explorations of Captain Cook on the eastern seaboard. As a description of Australia, it is essentially a synthesis for those unwilling to navigate the voluminous works of earlier mariners. It draws considerably upon the work of William Dampier - indeed the unknown compiler comments upon the ‘roughness of his style’ and takes some pride in presenting his facts in a rational manner. Dampier’s literary technique is condemned while its content is applauded: ‘though it may at present disgust the polished reader from wading through so crude a mass of information, by no means derogates from the merit of his work’. $10,500 Beddie, 27; Crittenden, ‘A Bibliography of the First Fleet’, 275 (as “Eden”); Davidson, ‘A Book Collector’s Notes’, pp. 79-81; Ferguson, 24; Holmes, 66.

[4504476 at hordern.com]

29.

[FIRST FLEET] PHILLIP, Governor Arthur.

Extracts of Letters from Arthur Phillip Esq. Governor of New South Wales, to Lord Sydney…

Quarto, [ii], 26 pp.; an excellent copy in half morocco over marbled boards by Bayntun of Bath, spine banded and lettered in gilt. London, J. Debrett, 1791.

The rare supplement to Governor Phillip’s account One of the rarest of First Fleet books: ‘there is keen competition among collectors when a copy turns up’ (Wantrup). This was the first public printing of Governor Phillip’s letters to the government: reporting on the state and prospects of the new colony in New South Wales, these letters and despatches continued the story of settlement after the events described in Phillip’s Voyage… to Botany Bay of 1789.

As with many eighteenth-century books, Phillip’s Voyage had actually been prepared by an anonymous editor who had access to Phillip’s despatches, along with the journals of other commanding officers, Lieutenant Shortland, Lieutenant Watts and Captain Marshall. The published account was so successful that London publishers realised that there was healthy demand for material on the new colony, and when some additional letters were published in a House of Commons paper, the London publisher John Debrett reprinted them in this form. Debrett had published White’s Journal in 1790, and was the competitor of John Stockdale, who had published Phillip’s Voyage; perhaps Debrett was able to take advantage of his position as the official publisher of the Parliamentary Register to get the jump on his competitor.

Although the parliamentary paper appeared a little earlier, most collectors in fact prefer the Debrett edition because the text is printed in much the same grand style as the books of Phillip and White. The following year Debrett continued the series of publications based on the parliamentary papers by issuing Copies and Extracts of Letters.

The book uses three despatches from Phillip to Lord Sydney as well as an important description of Norfolk Island by Philip Gidley King to continue the story of settlement after the events described in Phillip’s official account. It provides an insight into the early stages of the colony, with some attention being paid to the founding of Rose Hill where a ‘very industrious man’ (i.e. James Ruse) and one hundred convicts were cultivating the land. Phillip’s assessment of New South Wales is robust and positive, and he asserts that ‘a finer or more healthy climate is not to be found in any part of the world’. Indeed, he seems particularly pleased to report that while there have been seventy-seven deaths (including seven executions) since their arrival, that this has been balanced by eighty-seven newly-born children.

Appended to the letters of Phillip is King’s Description of Norfolk Island, which gives a positive assessment of the successful cultivation of crops such as wheat, barley, corn and sugar cane; although he does note in some exasperation that repeated attempts to work the flax plant have failed, and that ‘until a native of New Zealand can be carried’ thence, they may never succeed.

Provenance: H. Mackenzie-Begg, with bookplate.

$34,000 Crittenden, ‘A Bibliography of the First Fleet’, 195; Ferguson, 116; Wantrup, 9.

[4504401 at hordern.com]

30.

GILES, Ernest.

Australia Twice Traversed.

Two volumes, octavo, with a portrait of Giles and 20 other full-page plates, six folding coloured maps and other illustrations in the text; uncut in the fully pictorial grey-green cloth boards, lettered and decorated in gilt and black. London, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1889.

Presentation copy of this handsome exploration narrative A beautiful copy of the first edition, in the rare superior presentation issue of the book with the text pages trimmed and all edges gilded. This is a highly desirable author’s presentation copy, inscribed in each volume in red ink by Giles “Presented to William Garton Esqre, The Brother of an old friend in Australia, with the Compliments of the Author, Ernest Giles, London, New Year 1890”.

The most handsomely produced of late-nineteenth-century Australian books, Giles’ collection of his expeditions is hard to find in such good condition. The colourful, even flamboyant cover design is very different to the rather austere appearance of virtually all other exploration narratives.

Giles, who called himself ‘the last of the Australian explorers, was the first to attempt the crossing from the Telegraph Line to Western Australia.

In 1872 he set off from Chambers Pillar with two companions on a modest expedition, financed largely with the help of Ferdinand von Mueller.

Failing to cross Lake Amadeus, he turned back, but not before he had traversed some 1000 miles of hitherto uncharted territory. Giles cherished the hope of making a successful crossing, and although ‘forestalled by Peter Warburton and John Forrest, Giles succeeded in his cherished aim of making an overland crossing from South to Western Australia in 1875. Equipped with camels by Thomas Elder, he set out from Beltana and went for supplies to Port Augusta whence he proceeded first north-west and then west along a string of waterholes, Wynbring, Ooldea, Ooldabinna and Boundary Dam, until he reached the Western Australian border. (ADB) Australia Twice Traversed represents the collected narratives of Ernest Giles’s five expeditions through the centre and the west of Australia from 1872 to 1876. Giles struggled repeatedly to find an overland route to Western Australia, but it was not until his expedition of 1875-6 that he achieved the extraordinary feat of crossing the continent from South to Western Australia, via the Great Victoria Desert, and returning via Gibson’s Desert (which he had earlier named after one of his men). “Giles’s claim to be the last Australian explorer is perhaps a little exaggerated, but he was undeniably the last great explorer. The very scarce two-volume account of his life’s work in the vast unknown tracts of the Australian continent is fundamental to a collection of Australian exploration books…” (Wantrup). $8850 Ferguson, 9914; Wantrup, 202a.

[4504496 at hordern.com]

31.

GILES, Ernest.

Mr. E. Giles’s Explorations, 1873-4…

Foolscap folio, 69 pp.; with large folding ‘Map of the Country west of the Telegraph Line in the Interior of Australia explored by Mr E. Giles’; in an old (?original) binding of moiré brown cloth, front cover boldly lettered in gilt; spine renewed. [Adelaide], [Government Printer], 1874.

Giles’ second expedition retreats to the overland telegraph line This South Australian Parliamentary Paper, with a splendid large map, gives the first printing of the journal of Giles’s second expedition, from August 1873 to 13 July 1874. As Wantrup points out, “To encounter the immediacy of Giles’s own words one has to seek out the colonial publications which contain narratives of his earlier expeditions”, since the text of Giles’ much more familiar 1889 volumes “was edited and liberally worked up by Mrs Cashel Hoey whose affected and vexatious style was considered an ‘improvement’ on Giles’s unadorned but distinctly literate text”.

Starting further south than his first expedition, ‘Giles followed the line of the Musgrave Ranges which, unknown to him, had just been discovered by William Gosse. On reaching Mount Olga which he had earlier named from a distance, Giles found from Gosse’s draytracks that he had been anticipated but since they soon turned back he was encouraged to persevere. He spent the next summer trying to break through to the west from a base in the Tomkinson Range and in autumn persisted in attacking the desert from a northerly point in the Rawlinson Range. A desperate final effort cost him the life of one of his men, who gave his name to Gibson’s Desert, and brought Giles himself close to death; the exhaustion of his supplies compelled him to retreat, defeated, to the overland telegraph line’ (ADB).

The South Australian Surveyor-General, George Goyder, notes on the accompanying map that it “shows Mr Ernest Giles’ explorations during 1872-3 and 4; the tract of country however lying between Ayers’ Rock and Mt Stevenson, also that along the Mann and Tomkinson Ranges, and from thence west to… was previously explored by Mr W.C. Gosse’. $3850 McLaren, 8989.

[4504500 at hordern.com]

32.

GILL, Samuel Thomas.

The Australian Sketchbook by S.T.G.

Oblong folio, with 25 fine chromolithograph plates including the title; a large copy with generous margins in old half red morocco. Melbourne, Printed in Colours and Published by Hamel & Ferguson, [1865].

Australia’s first painter of modern life A very good copy of this famous book, from the library of the celebrated collector of books and ethnographica, James Edge-Partington. Gill’s most famous volume and his last, this is his wonderful series of images of rural scenes - bushranging, kangaroo stalking, the bush mailman, cattle droving etc. - with a poignant comparison throughout between the life of the Aborigines and that of the settlers. ‘Bush Funeral’ for example shows a weeping funeral procession behind a coffin pulled by two bullocks, and is followed by ‘Native Sepulchre’, an Aboriginal corpse on a platform with howling dingoes below.

The colour printing of the lithographs is of notably high quality for this date. The album was printed in 1865, later in the same year that chromolithography was first put to serious use in Chevalier’s ‘Album’. The colouring here (occasionally highlighted with a little hand-applied colour) is a delicate and successful use of the medium. “The title-page shows a likeness of the artist carrying his boots and equipment and crossing a shallow stream barefoot. His head is turned suspiciously towards two Aborigines shown half concealed by rocks, while unseen by him a snake menaces an unprotected foot. The sketch indicates something of Gill’s attitude towards himself at this time.

He evidently viewed his own situation with wry humour, adopted a generally fatalistic attitude, and held his own achievements and future in scant regard” (McCulloch).

As Sasha Grishin has pointed out in the recent superb exhibition of Gill’s work at the State Library of Victoria, and in the accompanying book, Gill was Australia’s first painter of modern life.

Provenance: James Edge-Partington, with his bookplate.

$8500 Ferguson, 9924; Wantrup, 251.

[4504453 at hordern.com]

33.

GILL, Samuel Thomas.

Sketches of the Victoria Gold Diggings and Diggers…

Quarto, with 24 cream-tinted lithographic plates; this copy preserving the original printed paper wrappers, decorated with vignettes of goldfields life, with book advertisements on yellow verso of front wrapper and on the back wrapper, in a neat old binding of half morocco and marbled boards. London, H.H. Collins & Co., 1853.

The preferred London edition: better versions of the plates One of S.T. Gill’s most desirable books: this is the rare London publication of the first 24 plates from Gill’s famous series, Sketches of the Victoria Gold Diggings. This is the only London edition of Gill’s Sketches and in this preferred version the illustrations are printed as lithographs on a tinted ground and in a much larger format than the Melbourne edition.

Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-1880) is celebrated as a distinctly Australian artist who excelled in depicting the chaos, jubilation and despair of life on the goldfields. He travelled to the Bendigo diggings with his brother John in mid-1852, but soon found that sketching life on the fields offered more promise than the backbreaking work of prospecting itself. The vast spectacle delighted Gill, whose light-hearted yet realistic style was ideally suited to the task: ‘his natural genius for identifying with the characters he portrayed was given full rein. The drawings of the diggers are extraordinarily observant but never critical’ (McCulloch, Artists of the Australian Gold Rush, p. 84).

Worth noting on the original wrappers preserved here is the publishers’ statement on the inside of the front wrapper: “The interest evinced by the Public at the present time in connexion with the recently discovered Gold Fields of Australia, for which thousands of our countrymen have left their native shores, anxiously hoping to share the Golden Treasures so abundantly scattered over that extensive Continent, has induced the Publisher of these Sketches to lay them before the public, with the assurance that their accuracy and character will not fail to interest many of those who, from the fact of having friends and connexions engaged in the very localities and labours here depicted, will be aided by this effort to realize to their minds’ eye, more vividly than otherwise could be done, the scenes, characters, and circumstances among which they are thrown.”

Provenance: Edward Pescott, Geelong collector, probably bought from Maggs Bros., London, with a note by them confirming that only this part was published; with Pescott’s 1953 letter consigning the book to Keith M. Bowden, author of the first monograph on Gill; unidentified collector (?date) with romantic bookplate with initials “A.L.F.”

$18,850 Bowden, p.123; Ferguson, 9920b; Wantrup, 245; not in Abbey.

[4504455 at hordern.com]

34.

GILL, Samuel Thomas.

Victoria Illustrated.

Oblong quarto, with illustrated title and 45 full-page steel engravings; later half red morocco binding.

Melbourne & Sydney, Sands & Kenny, 1857.

Original printing of Gill’s Victoria views The original printing of Gill’s famous views of Victoria, including many scenes of the prosperous and energetic city of Melbourne, Geelong and the Victorian goldfields, with four goldfields scenes and numerous vistas of gold townships such as Ballarat, Bendigo and Sandhurst: Gill’s charming collection of views ‘has a place in any collection’ (Wantrup).

The publisher John Sands commissioned Gill to prepare this series of views, which were then sent to England to be engraved on steel, and the work was so successful that a number of pirated versions appeared in England and Germany.

The suite of 45 plates, with scenes of stylish Melbourne alongside bush scenes and the goldfields, forms a detailed and accurate record of Victoria during an important era of unprecedented growth and prosperity.

Gill travelled frequently to the goldfields at Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine on horseback, becoming known as “the artist of the goldfields” for his evocative sketches and watercolours which captured the rapid changes and the bustle and excitement of the times. In this respect the numerous vistas of the large gold towns are of special significance as a historical record of settlements in the midst of very rapid expansion.

Gill played an important role in the development of a uniquely Australian artistic style during the mid-nineteenth century. Wantrup notes “Gill was the first - and for a long time the only - significant artist whose works embody a distinctively Australian approach to his subject. In his work we see for the first time the characteristic egalitarianism, ironic humour coupled with sombre realism, irreverent disregard for authority and mockery of pretension that are so often identified in later Australian art.” $4250 Ferguson, 9924; Wantrup, 260a.

[4504433 at hordern.com]

35.

[GILL] WILSON, Edward.

Rambles at the Antipodes: a Series of Sketches…

Small octavo, with 12 tinted lithograph plates and two folding maps; a very good copy in the original pictorial boards, later cloth spine, preserved in a folding box. London, W.H. Smith and Son, 1859.

In the rare original pictorial binding First edition, in the very rare original pictorial boards. The twelve plates are by S.T. Gill and were commissioned for the book: they represent one of few examples of his work illustrating other people’s books.

This interesting account of Australasian travel was by the radical democrat owner-editor of the Argus, based on extensive travels throughout Australasia in the later 1850s. The appendix contains a variety of information relating to the Victorian Gold Rush, including details on the yields of different districts.

Ferguson knew various cloth bindings of this first edition. Charmingly, the back board to this copy features a simple illustration of the two poles, featuring “Winter Night”, a top-hatted northern hemisphere gentleman huddling from the cold, and “Summer Noon”, a tramp making his way in the heat of Australia. $2700 Bagnall, 6132; Ferguson, 18649; Hocken, 197.

[4504388 at hordern.com]

36.

[GREAT BRITAIN: PARLIAMENT]

Correspondence… [and] Further Papers [1852] Relative to the Discovery of Gold in Australia…

Two volumes, foolscap folio, two maps, diagrams; recent blue cloth, second volume with original wrappers bound in. London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 3 February and 14 June 1852.

Fine Arrowsmith map of the Australian goldfields Scarce collection of reports by the colonial Governors of New South Wales and Victoria documenting the discovery of gold.

The reports primarily take the form of despatches between Governor Sir Charles FitzRoy and Lieutenant-Governor Charles Joseph La Trobe to Earl Grey, Secretary of State for the Colonies.

FitzRoy’s initial despatches are cautious about the extent and feasibility of the goldfields, and warn that many of the wild claims circulating are too good to be true. Yet the discovery of rich workable fields and subsequent strikes in Victoria generated unprecedented social displacement that sorely tested the colonial administration. Both FitzRoy and Latrobe were acutely aware of the lawlessness and vice experienced on the Californian goldfields and sought to avert a similar disaster through the system of licences. Yet the greatest preoccupation of both capable colonial administrators was averting a flood of skilled working men from both cities to the fields that could potentially collapse the economies of New South Wales and Victoria. FitzRoy earned the cautious praise of Earl Grey for his firm and capable grasp of a volatile social environment.

The second report contains the impressive hand-coloured map of southeast Australia by John Arrowsmith, with the newly discovered gold bearing districts hand-coloured in yellow. The map is captioned “The South Eastern Portion of Australia; compiled from the Colonial Surveys, and from details furnished by Exploratory Expeditions” and was published by John Arrowsmith on 2 June 1852. $2350 [4504391 at hordern.com]

37.

[GREAT BRITAIN: PARLIAMENT]

Further Papers [1855] Relative to the Discovery of Gold in Australia…

Folio, viii (last blank), 198 pp., with four folding maps and numerous engraved diagrams and illustrations throughout the text; a fine copy with all maps well preserved; recent red buckram with gilt lettering. London, Eyre and Spottiswoode… for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1855.

Arrowsmith map of the Mount Alexander goldfields Highly informative collection of despatches from the governors of New South Wales and Victoria, including four handsome hand-coloured folding goldfields maps lithographed by John Arrowsmith. Also included are two brief botanical reports by Swainson and von Mueller.

The maps are of great interest. The first illustrates the Liverpool Plains, the second the country between Moreton Bay and the River Condamine, while the third concerns the territory between the River Condamine and the Nandawar Mountains. The fourth and largest (438 x 550 mm.), which details the Mount Alexander fields, is entitled “Geological Sketch of the Country in the Vicinity of Mnt. Alexander by A. R. Selwyn, Geo. Surveyor for the Colony of Victoria”.

The despatches published in this report were originally sent to Sir George Grey and the Duke of Newcastle, and are here published for use by both houses of the British Parliament. They report on the progress of the gold rush, with occasional entries relating to other colonial affairs. Social conditions at the diggings and problems of effective management are prominent themes. Social unrest is increasingly apparent throughout; and in this regard two despatches relating to disturbances precipitated by the presence of Chinese miners are of special interest. The extent of criminal activity in Victoria during the goldrush is examined in some detail (with two entries titled ‘Statistics of Crime’ tabulating results from Melbourne and greater Victoria.

Although the report is primarily concerned with goldfields management, other despatches cover the construction of the Sydney mint, telegraph construction, and two botanical reports. The first of these was prepared by William Swainson, then acting Government botanist, and fills seven pages.

The second botanical report by von Mueller comprises the final appendix to this volume and numbers 12 pages. $2250 [4504472 at hordern.com]

38.

GREY, Captain George.

Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery…

Two volumes, octavo, with all 22 plates (six coloured); with two large folding maps loose in an end pocket and with the required advertisement leaves and an extra 4 pp. advertisements at the start of volume 1; original purple-brown publisher’s cloth. London, T. and W. Boone, 1841.

With an appendix by John Gould First edition: one of the most striking of all works of inland exploration, with the suite of stunning images of Wandjina paintings from the north-western Kimberley region. Sir George Grey’s first expedition described here began in December 1837 when he and his party of eight were landed from the Beagle at Hanover Bay on the north-west coast. The expedition was supposed to proceed south following the coast to the Swan River settlement. However problems beset them from the outset, and for five months the party meandered inland at a slow pace. Meetings with local Aborigines proved hostile, and Grey was badly wounded by a spear. Eventually, due to diminished provisions and exhaustion, the party returned to Hanover Bay and were rescued by the Beagle. Despite falling well short of their goal, the expedition yielded significant results: Grey discovered the Glenelg River, the Macdonald Range, the Stephen Range, the Gairdner River and Mount Lyell.

Grey also achieved the distinction of becoming the first white man to see a Wandjina painting when he discovered the ones reproduced here in a rock shelter on the Glenelg River in the rugged Kimberley.

Grey’s second expedition left Perth in 1839 with the intention of exploring the North-West Cape.

Again his goals were not realised: he was thwarted, first by the loss of one of his three whale-boats and most of his provisions, then by the wrecking of the remaining boats and supplies. A 300-mile trek back to Perth ensued, during which Grey and all but one of his men survived on whatever food they could scavenge from the land. Although Grey suffered appalling hardships and neither venture went according to plan, the results were valuable. “His expeditions were the first to examine the previously ignored north-west interior of the continent and he discovered much useful territory. The inland explorations of Grey and Lushington (his deputy), complemented by the associated coastal explorations of Wickham and Stokes in the Beagle, were a major advance in the discovery of the Australian continent” (Wantrup, 206).

Grey’s description of his first sighting of a Wandjina painting is memorable: ‘looking over some bushes, at the sandstone rocks which were above us, I suddenly saw from one of them a most extraordinary large figure peering down upon me. Upon examination, this proved to be a drawing at the entrance to cave, which, on entering, I found to contain, besides, many remarkable paintings’.

Realising the significance of the discovery, he went to considerable lengths to sketch, measure and describe the figures, which are reproduced here. $6750 Ferguson, 3228; Wantrup, 131.

[4504434 at hordern.com]

39.

HAM, Thomas (engraver and publisher).

The Gold Diggers Portfolio…

Small quarto, the fourteen lithograph plates in excellent condition with large margins, gathered together with a simple spine and loosely contained in a later leather portfolio binding, with an old typed listing of the plates, and with the original gold-on-white front titling wrapper (somewhat damaged) trimmed to margins and laid down on a blank leaf. Melbourne, Cyrus Mason, “1854” [actually c.1859].

Complete copy of the Ham Portfolio A classic illustrated work on the goldfields, combining images by several significant artists. As Wantrup notes, ‘Most of these plates are unsigned but are the work of David Tulloch, William Strutt, George Strafford and Thomas Ham himself. A few years later Cyrus Mason, another Melbourne publisher of lithographs, issued the portfolio under the same title and date but with his own imprint and with the plates lithographed on thinner paper of slightly larger size. The images in the two editions are substantially the same, although some of the images were redrawn for the Mason edition. Mason apparently continued to issue the portfolio over a number of years since plates are known with the imprint of the succeeding firm of Stringer, Mason & Co. ‘Collectors should seek out a copy of this rare plate book in either edition… Because of the fragility of the work many incomplete or made-up copies exist and since Ferguson’s description of the book is unusually shoddy these incomplete copies can trick an unwary collector - indeed, even a dealer or two. A collector should ensure that the copy he is offered is complete with titling-wrapper and fourteen plates and that the imprint on his plates is consistent with the title imprint - remembering that a copy may quite correctly include plates with either the imprint of Cyrus Mason or of Stringer, Mason & Co. If he is fortunate enough to find such a copy he… would be wise to do so. It is a fine work and an unusual record of the artistic activity of the period in Victoria, a period during which many able professional artists came to the colony in search of gold and left a permanent impression on the cultural life of the Australian colonies. William Strutt, whose work is included in Ham’s Gold Diggers Portfolio, is just one of many considerable artists who flocked to the gold diggings, leaving behind them a heritage we still enjoy’. $5850 Ferguson, 10178 (1854 edition); Wantrup, 254b.

[4504465 at hordern.com]

40.

HAMILTON, George.

A Voyage Round the World in his Majesty’s Frigate Pandora.

Octavo, engraved frontispiece portrait of the author; an appealing copy in a good early tan calf binding, gilt banded spine with dark label. Berwick, W. Phorson, 1793.

The arrest of the Bounty mutineers, and a wreck on the Great Barrier Reef Rare first edition: the account of the doomed Pandora voyage to the Pacific in search of the Bounty mutineers, written by the ship’s surgeon, who survived shipwreck and a terrible open-boat voyage to safety. Hamilton writes in an easy, amusing fashion, and this is one of the most personal of eighteenth-century voyage accounts: it would certainly have entertained the contemporary reader, and helped set the tone for the many medical-voyagers who would publish their own books in the nineteenth century.

William Bligh had returned to England in 1790 and the Admiralty immediately commissioned the Pandora to search for and arrest the Bounty mutineers. Hamilton’s is the only full contemporary account of the voyage, which succeeded in arresting 14 of Bligh’s former crew in Tahiti. The remainder of the cruise of the Pandora was ill-fated: it is now thought likely that the officers failed to recognise a distress signal from the La Pérouse survivors while sailing in the Santa Cruz Group, and not long after the vessel was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef while attempting to sail the Endeavour Strait. As the ship foundered Captain Edwards had left the prisoners locked up in the infamous “Pandora’s box” on deck to drown, but the master-of-arms dropped keys to them and ten made it to safety. Just like Bligh and the loyal Bounty sailors, Edwards and his men now faced a gruelling open-boat voyage to Dutch colonies: the survivors ultimately landed in Timor (Bligh had sailed for Batavia). The expedition did make some discoveries, including some survey work of the Strait in order to determine the best passage to Botany Bay, but also failed, of course, to find the remaining mutineers on Pitcairn Island. $16,500 Ferguson, 151.

[4504393 at hordern.com]

41.

[HUME & HOVELL] BLAND, William.

Journey of Discovery to Port Phillip…

Octavo, with folding engraved map; in old (though not contemporary) half roan and pebble-grained cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Sydney, James Tegg, printed by Henry Bull, 1837.

The overland route to Port Phillip: first published edition

First published edition, preceded only by the extremely rare, privately distributed, proof printing of 1831, now essentially unobtainable (the last copy sold, at the 2006 Davidson auction, fetched $932,000). The preliminary edition of this book, which was not issued with a map, was only ever printed as a proof, intended to be corrected by those interested parties so there was ‘less liability to error in making the reprint’. This edition was the first generally available, though it is itself extremely uncommon. Although published by Tegg, the work was actually printed by Henry Bull.

Tegg published the work in early August 1837 (the earliest advertisement we have traced dates from 4 August). The very fine map was done by Raphael Clint, who had taken over from J.G. Austin.

Encouraged by Mitchell’s recent explorations in south-eastern Australia, Bland decided to issue a public edition of his narrative of the Hume and Hovell expedition that had blazed the way for Mitchell and Sturt. This work records one of the most momentous expeditions ever undertaken.

Hume’s own account of the expedition was not published until 1855, with three increasingly expanded editions by 1874.

The exploration carried out by Hume and Hovell was of extreme significance. Hume was a veteran explorer having begun his career with several short expeditions at the age of seventeen in 1814. In 1824 he undertook to lead a party overland to Spencer Gulf, but because of the expense involved he joined forces with William Hovell, a former sea captain. Having agreed to change their objective to Western Port, they left Hume’s property near Appin (‘the last which is occupied by the colonists’) and after three months reached the coast at Corio Bay. This work describes that epic journey through unknown territory, during which both the Australian Alps and the Murray River were revealed. The book is an account of the journey in diary form, edited from Hovell’s field book, and put into the third person. $28,750 Ferguson, 2234; Wantrup, 110.

[4504425 at hordern.com]

42.

HUNTER, John

An Historical Journal…

Quarto, with 17 engraved plates, folding maps and charts; a very good copy, a decent size with the often cropped date on the title-page intact, in a modern binding of quarter morocco and marbled boards. London, John Stockdale, January 1, 1793.

Hunter’s foundation book First edition of John Hunter’s Journal: a foundation book of Australian coastal exploration which, together with Phillip’s account, gives the first charting of Sydney Harbour and includes an excellent account of their exploration activities in the environs of Sydney Cove. Hunter’s account is a primary source for the early settlement of Norfolk Island, whose first settlement had also been named Sydney (or Sidney) Town in honour of the Home Secretary.

Hunter sailed as second captain of HMS Sirius under Phillip for the voyage to Botany Bay. He began his exploration work the day after their arrival, sailing with Phillip and two other officers on a two-day voyage in search of a more suitable place for settlement. To the north of Botany Bay they discovered the full extent of Sydney Harbour, which Hunter described as ‘a large opening, or bay, about three leagues and a half to the northward of Cape Banks’. Cook had given the name Port Jackson to what he thought was an open bay, although he had not entered it and had no knowledge of the extent of the harbour which lay beyond Sydney Heads.

Hunter continued to survey and explore the Harbour (his detailed chart of the Harbour was published in Phillip’s Voyage in 1789), as well as making numerous trips to Broken Bay and Pittwater, and into the interior along the Hawkesbury River towards the Blue Mountains. Hunter gives detailed accounts of his various forays into the country, particularly his many interactions with the indigenous people. These accounts are characteristically sympathetic and respectful and sometimes - as in the case of caring for a young Aboriginal girl recovering from smallpox - quite moving.

Hunter only left for England in late 1791 after an enforced stay of eleven months on Norfolk Island following the shipwreck of the Sirius there. In England he published this account, and was later recalled to New South Wales in February of 1795 to replace Captain William Paterson as commander in September of that year.

The engraved plates and maps, many of the latter from original cartography by Hunter, Dawes and Bradley, are very fine. Of particular note is the plate View of the settlement on Sydney Cove, after a sketch by Hunter, which is the earliest depiction of the town of Sydney, while the image A family of New South Wales, after a drawing by Philip Gidley King, was engraved by William Blake: Bernard Smith noted that “there is no finer pictorial expression of the idea of the noble savage in visual art than Blake’s engraving” (European Vision and the South Pacific). Blake began his artistic career as a commercial engraver, having been apprenticed as a 14-year-old in 1772 to the engraver James Basire. $7850 Crittenden, ‘A Bibliography of the First Fleet’, 110; Ferguson, 152; Hill, 857; Wantrup, 13. Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations, XXVII.

[4504456 at hordern.com]

43.

JACK, Robert Logan.

Northmost Australia. Three centuries of exploration…

Two volumes, large octavo, with the full suite of 17 loose folding maps contained in endpockets of the bindings; in a handsome modern binding of half dark tan calf with red-brown labels. London, Simpkin Marshall, 1921.

The North Splendid synthesis of geographical knowledge of northern Australia, by the explorer and government geologist Robert Logan Jack (1845-1921).

In 1879-1880 Jack led a surveying party into the remote wilderness of far north Queensland in search of tin, gold, and other payable minerals. The journey was fraught with danger, as described in a memorial address by Dorothy Hill: ‘Jack and the prospecting party of 1879-80 had the same natural dangers to face as Kennedy - poison weed which killed the horses; hostile natives; festoons of mosquitoes and flies; heavy rain and heavy moist heat…dangers in flooded rivers and sodden ground.’ Here the party encountered hostile tribes and Jack was speared in the shoulder and seriously wounded, luckily escaping septicaemia in the tropical heat.

Intelligent, capable, and affable, Jack was ideally suited to the hard toil of government surveying work, and was renowned for his ability to placate the demands of miners, prospectors and other entrepreneurs drawn to Queensland in search of quick riches. Northmost Australia represents a lifetime of first-hand knowledge gleaned in the wilderness. $1325 [4504449 at hordern.com]

44.

KING, Phillip Parker.

Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia…

Two volumes, octavo, with a folding chart, 13 plates and a folding engraving; with the colophon leaf and the leaf of errata at the end of vol. 2; in a most attractive contemporary binding of polished calf, gilt, spines ornately panelled in gilt with double black labels. London, John Murray, 1826.

The rare 1826 issue, in a fine contemporary binding First edition, first issue: the rare form of this important book with the publication date of 1826 on both title-pages. First published in April 1826, this first issue of this classic Australian voyage is “a notorious rarity” (Wantrup). Late in 1826 or early in 1827 the publisher, John Murray, had the original title-page dated 1826 excised and replaced with a cancel title-page dated 1827. Known to Ferguson in a single copy and to Davidson in less than a handful, more copies of this issue have been identified in recent years but the 1826 issue remains a desirable rarity.

The book was properly published in 1827, with the title-pages reset to show that date, and describes the important Australian coastal voyages of the Mermaid and the Bathurst. From 1815 or so, British interest in the largely uncharted northern and north-western coast of Australia had increased, partly out of concern at the territorial ambitions of other nations, especially the Dutch and the French. King was sent from England in 1817, with Admiralty instructions to complete the survey of Australia and finish the charting begun by Flinders and Freycinet. By 1824-25 he had issued a series of eight large charts showing the northern coasts, to be followed with this complete printed journal of his expedition. The naturalist Allan Cunningham sailed with the expedition, and the narrative includes extensive comments on botanical and geological phenomena (supplemented by notes from Robert Brown) together with nautical and hydrographic observations. The engraved views were taken from King’s own sketches.

Provenance: Edward Charles Stirling, with bookplate; Geoffrey Cains, with bookplate.

$18,850 Davidson, ‘A Book Collector’s Notes’, pp. 127-8; Ferguson, 1084; Wantrup, 84a; not in Abbey.

[4504497 at hordern.com]

45.

KING, Phillip Parker.

Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia…

Two volumes, octavo, with a folding chart, 13 plates and a folding engraving; contemporary half calf, spines gilt with double labels. London, John Murray, 1827.

The rare 1826 issue of the exploring classic First edition, second issue, the first to be properly published: a very rare form of this important book was evidently issued before publication, with the publication date of 1826 on both titlepages. The book was actually published in 1827, with the titlepages reset to show that date.

The book describes the important Australian coastal voyages of the Mermaid and the Bathurst. From 1815 or so, British interest in the largely uncharted northern and north-western coast of Australia had increased, partly out of concern at the territorial ambitions of other nations, especially the Dutch and the French. King was sent from England in 1817, with Admiralty instructions to complete the survey of Australia and finish the charting begun by Flinders and Freycinet. By 1824-25 he had issued a series of eight large charts showing the northern coasts, to be followed with this complete printed journal of his expedition. The naturalist Allan Cunningham sailed with the expedition, and the narrative includes extensive comments on botanical and geological phenomena, together with nautical and hydrographic observations. The engraved views were taken from King’s own sketches.

The work also includes significant natural history essays, including work by John Edward Gray, William Sharp Macleay and William Henry Fitton, three senior British scientists. An important section publishes the long essay by Allan Cunningham, ‘A Few General Remarks on the Vegetation of certain coasts of Terra Australis…’. Cunningham had sailed with King, and so this section has the added interest of eyewitness reportage, as well as comparisons between the botany of east and west coasts. Cunningham’s report is supplemented by notes from Robert Brown; and the whole section concludes with three natural history plates.

Admiral Phillip Parker King, Australian-born son of the third governor Philip Gidley King, became the Navy’s leading hydrographer. His coastal voyages and Oxley’s expeditions inland were the great expansionary undertakings of the Macquarie era. Despatched to complete Flinders’s interrupted survey and firmly to establish Great Britain’s claim to the north coast, King charted the greater part of the west, north and north-east coasts and also carried out important surveys in the area of the Barrier Reef. His hydrographical work is still the basis of many of the modern charts for the areas he surveyed.

Provenance: Edward Charles Stirling (1848-1919, anthropologist on the Horn expedition into Central Australia), with bookplates; John Warren Bakewell (1847-1923, South Australian lawyer), with bookplates.

$6500 Davidson, ‘A Book Collector’s Notes’, pp. 127-8; Ferguson, 1084; Wantrup, 84a.

[4504423 at hordern.com]

46.

LANG, John Dunmore.

An Historical and Statistical Account of New South Wales…

Two volumes, octavo, with a folding coloured map; in a good modern binding of half calf and marbled boards. London, 1834.

‘The History of Doctor Lang, to which is added the History of New South Wales’ First edition of a classic and influential study of the colony of New South Wales; there were several subsequent editions. The Westminster Review suggested that its title should read ‘The History of Doctor Lang, to which is added the History of New South Wales’; however, it was among the most widely read and fully informed accounts of Australia.

John Dunmore Lang (1799-1878) was, as D.W.A. Baker notes in the ADB, Presbyterian clergyman, politician, educationist, immigration organizer, historian, anthropologist, journalist, gaol-bird and, in his wife’s words engraved on his statue in Sydney, ‘Patriot and Statesman’. He arrived in the colony in 1823, possessed of enormous energy, and “pushed his way to power at once”, as H.M. Green says, with “a great wave of popularity and dissension foaming at his bows and leaving a wide wake behind him”. This is an attack on the emancipists, among others, by Wentworth’s major rival, and is Lang’s most important work. Although Lang shared with Wentworth the desire to encourage immigration and implement self-government, he in fact went further in wanting independence.

Provenance: James Angas Johnson, with bookplates.

$1850 Ferguson, 1806.

[4504438 at hordern.com]

47.

LEICHHARDT, Ludwig.

Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia [with the separately issued map].

Octavo, with frontispiece and six aquatint plates in the text (one folding); bookplate; a very good copy in the original cloth, accompanied by the three large folding maps in a modern cloth folder of matching size and colour. London, T. & W. Boone, 1847.

Leichhardt, complete with the maps First edition: a handsome copy of a pivotal document in the history of Australian exploration, with the text volume in the original publishers blind-blocked cloth binding and corresponding to the primary issue described in Australian Rare Books, with correct first issue lettering on the spine, publisher’s advertisements and slip advertising the release of Jukes’ Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of H.M.S. Fly. This copy is complete with the large three-sheet map by Arrowsmith: based on Leichhardt’s observations, it was an extensive and detailed record of a significant part of the Australian continent hitherto unknown. Published separately at an advanced price, not many copies were issued and it is now rarely found with the text.

Ludwig Leichhardt’s Journal of an Overland Expedition documents one of the most unlikely and courageous ventures ever undertaken in the history of the continent. When Leichhardt arrived in Sydney in February 1842 he was considered learned but eccentric: he possessed no bush craft skills, had poor eyesight and was unable to shoot. Yet he proved a quick learner and launched successful forays as far north as Moreton Bay. For some years settlers had eagerly talked of finding a route from southern Queensland to the Northern Territory, so linking their abundant grazing districts with Asian markets. When a Government funded expedition stalled, Leichhardt headed his own venture funded by pastoralists and business-men impressed by the seemingly indefatigable German.

What followed was one of the longest journeys of Australian inland exploration - a trek of stupefying distance, difficulty and endurance spanning 4,800 kilometres. The party was racked by interpersonal conflict, inexperience and continual hostility from local Aboriginal tribes (in late June 1845 one member was killed and two others seriously injured during a raid near the Gulf of Carpentaria). After fourteen months they finally reached Port Essington in the Northern Territory in a state of perilous exhaustion.

When Leichhardt and his men returned to Sydney they had been given up as lost. Celebrations lasted for months and he was hailed ‘the prince of explorers’ and received a sizeable sum raised by public subscription. His scientific and geographic work was greatly admired during his lifetime, but his reputation as an expeditionary leader has been criticised since. Leichhardt’s mercurial temperament and mysterious death during a later expedition have become part of the mythology of European Australia.

Provenance: Bookplate of D.H. McInnes.

$17,750 Ferguson, 4571; Wantrup, 138a and 139.

[4504450 at hordern.com]

48.

LYCETT, Joseph.

Views in Australia…

Oblong folio, a tall copy with the pictorial lithographed title untrimmed, 48 coloured aquatint views after drawings by Joseph Lycett, the colouring generally very bright and of notably high quality, two engraved maps (one folding), with descriptive letterpress text, later neat owner’s signature; an excellent copy in a very attractive Riviere binding of full tan polished calf gilt, in a matching full fine calf leather case, ornately gilt. London, J. Souter, 1825.

By Governor Macquarie’s artist First edition of the great Australian plate book, one of the earliest and most important collections of antipodean landscapes.

This was a landmark in the development of Australian illustrated books: Lycett’s charming, highly-coloured views of New South Wales and Tasmania are justly famous today and the book as a whole provides a remarkable visual record of Macquarie’s Australia. Memorably described as ‘an enticing book’ in the late Edmund Capon’s ABC documentary on the “Art of Australia”, Capon commented that ‘when these pictures were first seen in Britain, it was something of a revelation, a little bit like receiving postcards from another planet.’

Not only does the book offer an historical snapshot of New South Wales and Tasmania in the early decades of settlement, but especially from the point of view of colonial architecture, it is a collection of remarkable importance. Lycett’s incomparable plates record some of the colony’s most important houses and country seats, and provide an invaluable contextual record of many lesser-known buildings and indeed building types.

Lycett had arrived in New South Wales as a convicted forger in 1814. Trained as a portrait and miniature painter in Staffordshire, his services as a professional artist were much in demand and he was soon working for the publisher Absalom West. He was appointed artist to Major-General Macquarie, the governor of New South Wales. Impressed with Lycett’s talents, Macquarie sent three of his drawings to Earl Bathurst, Secretary of the Colonies (the dedicatee of the Views) who, it is supposed in payment, granted a pardon to the artist.

Little is known of Lycett himself after the publication of the Views, which - with Wallis’ Historical Account - marks the end of an era in the publication of Australian illustrated books: the illustrated books to follow would be on a rather less grand scale. In the advertisement to the book Lycett announced his plan to publish a matching ‘Natural History of Australia’, but no such work ever appeared. In 1825 Lycett was in his early fifties and still, no doubt the incurable alcoholic Commissioner Bigge reported him to be a few years before.

This is a finely bound and beautiful copy of the most important colour plate landscape book published on colonial Australia.

Provenance: R. Lionel Foster, Folkestone, inscription.

$74,500 Ferguson, 1031; Wantrup, 218b.

[4504397 at hordern.com]

49.

OGLE, Nathaniel.

The Colony of Western Australia. A Manual for Emigrants‌

Octavo, with frontispiece and four plates (two folding) by C.D. Wittenoom; four folding tables; large folding map of Western Australia (coloured in outline) in endpocket of the binding; half calf with marbled boards by Aquarius. London, James Fraser, 1839.

A Domesday Book for the Swan River First edition: a highly important source of information on the fledgling colony of Western Australia, incorporating a detailed and comprehensive census of leaseholders and allotments throughout the state: in effect, this is a Domesday Book of the Swan River.

The principal aim of the work is to provide an honest and accurate description of the colony for the information of prospective migrants. The local history and merits of each region are detailed, with an eye to various types of agriculture and grazing enterprise. The legal status of Aborigines is examined in relation to land grants and ownership, reflecting the fundamental emphasis of book on the availability of quality land for potential immigrants. Accordingly, the appendices list the landholders of Western Australia at the time of publication, all carefully checked and verified from official sources. These detailed lists include the name of the owner or leaseholder, size of the property, date of issue and any special conditions attached to the sale, lease or grant.

The value of this book lies in the effort taken by the author to compile an accurate account drawn from a diversity of original documents, including personal memoirs, official journals, the logs of several private expeditions and coastal voyages undertaken in the first decade of settlement. It includes a large folding map printed in colour compiled by John Arrowsmith from the survey of John Septimus Roe. The sensible and eminently practical nature of the work belies an easy writing style that dips into anecdote and first-hand description to enrich the narrative. $3450 Ferguson, 2819.

[4504443 at hordern.com]

50.

OXLEY, John.

Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales.

Quarto, with three folding charts, two folding tables, a folding engraved plate and five aquatints, two with original hand-colouring, in later half red-brown morocco, gilt, all edges gilt, by Morrell. London, John Murray, 1820.

“The chief book-making achievement of the Macquarie period” First edition of John Oxley’s narrative of his two major expeditions, the first detailed description of the Australian interior and the earliest book devoted to Australian inland exploration. This is a very attractive copy of the most handsome of all Australian exploration journals, a finely produced quarto volume whose appearance recalls the earlier quartos of the First Fleet chroniclers and was clearly designed to rank on the shelf with the books by his illustrious predecessors like Phillip, Hunter, Tench, Collins, White, Grant and Flinders. It “is undoubtedly the chief book-making achievement of the Macquarie period…” (People, Print and Paper). The finely-drawn maps and aquatints include views drawn by Major James Taylor from sketches by Evans, and the striking portrait “A Native Chief of Bathurst”, prepared after a drawing by John Lewin, and one of very few known Aboriginal subjects by Australia’s first professional artist.

Following the discovery of the Lachlan River by Evans in 1815, Macquarie appointed Oxley to lead an expedition to determine the course of the river and investigate its potential. Evans was appointed as second-in-command and Allan Cunningham was appointed as botanist. Setting out from Bathurst in April 1817 Oxley named the Macquarie River, explored the Lachlan and travelled about twelve hundred miles. But his findings on this first expedition were of some disappointment and Oxley recorded in his journal ‘I was forced to come to the conclusion, that the interior of this vast country is a marsh and uninhabitable…’.

A second expedition, to determine the course of the Macquarie River, was mounted in 1818 again with Evans as second-in-command to Oxley. After being bogged down in marshy country, Oxley split the expedition into two parties: he persevered into the Macquarie Marshes, whilst Evans travelled to the north-east and discovered the Castlereagh River. After regrouping Oxley and Evans headed eastwards, discovering the Liverpool Plains, the Peel River, and the New England tableland, before reaching the coast, discovering the Hastings River and Port Macquarie. He recorded his relief: ‘…on gaining the summit… we beheld the ocean at our feet. Every difficulty vanished, and, in imagination, we were already home…’. $8750 Ferguson, 796; Wantrup, 107.

[4504414 at hordern.com]

51.

PHILLIP, Governor Arthur.

The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay…

Quarto, portrait and engraved title, seven folding engraved charts and 46 engraved plates; bound with the final leaf of advertisements; second state of the title-page, with a single name on the medallion; page 122 with the uncorrected mis-numbering 221, with the early ‘Wulpine’ state of the ‘Vulpine Opossum’ plate at p. 150, early state of the ‘Kangooroo’ plate at p. 106 (later changed to ‘Kanguroo’); a fine copy in a very good modern binding (probably by Aquarius) of half calf and marbled boards, spine ornately panelled in gilt with crimson leather label. London, John Stockdale, 1789.

First edition of the foundation book A handsome copy of the first edition: the foundation book of European settlement in Australia.

Based on the governor’s journals and despatches and assembled into book form by the London publisher Stockdale, this is - as the official account of the first settlement - the single most important book to describe the journey to Botany Bay and the foundations of modern Australia.

It describes the events from March 1787, just before the First Fleet sailed from the Isle of Wight, up to September 1788. There is a chapter dealing with the fauna of New South Wales, appendices detailing the routes of various ships to Botany Bay, from Botany Bay to Norfolk Island and from Port Jackson to various other ports, and finally a list of convicts sent to New South Wales. The book also contains some excellent maps by John Hunter and William Dawes, including the first of the Sydney Cove settlement, which shows in detail the buildings and “progress” which had been made by July 1788.

Davidson summarises the importance of this volume: ‘Being the authentic record of first settlement the work’s importance cannot be over-emphasised, and no collection [of Australiana] can be complete without a copy’, and Wantrup notes that ‘as a detailed and officially sanctioned account of the new colony, the first edition of Stockdale’s Phillip is a key work and essential to any serious collection of Australian books’. $12,000 Crittenden, ‘A Bibliography of the First Fleet’, 180; Ferguson, 47; Hill, 1346; Wantrup, 5.

[4504499 at hordern.com]

52.

PHILLIP, Governor Arthur.

The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay… Second Edition…

Quarto, portrait and engraved title, seven folding engraved charts and 46 engraved plates; some light offsetting from the plates as is to be expected; a splendid copy, with wide margins, in contemporary polished marbled calf, flat spine banded in gilt, red leather label. London, Stockdale, 1790.

Second and revised edition A beautiful copy of the very scarce well revised and re-organised second edition of the classic account of Australian first settlement. The publisher, Stockdale, had been unhappy with the slightly disorganised nature of his 1789 first edition of this official account; he discarded the first edition sheets within a few months, issuing this new version both in parts and in volume form (a single copy of the parts version is known today, in the Mitchell Library). A clever publisher, he neatly makes a virtue of both the new and the old editions: ‘Nothing seems to be required’, he writes, ‘in sending out this second edition, but to give assurance, that the alterations made in it, are such only as, while they raise in some degree the value of the present publication, cannot materially depreciate the former’.

This should properly be seen as the “best edition” of the work, at any rate in its uncoloured form.

Apart from the re-arrangement and general improvement, Stockdale adds a really substantial and significant appendix, largely reprinting his own publication, the anonymous 1787 History of New Holland. It is accompanied by the fine “New Chart of New Holland”, coloured in outline and with an inset map of Botany Bay, that he had prepared for that 1787 publication. The new sub-title for the Appendix reads ‘Appendix Continued. The History of New Holland, from its first discovery in MDCXVI, to the present time. And a Discourse on Banishment, by the Right Honourable Lord Aukland [sic]. Illustrated with a chart of New Holland, and a plan of Botany Bay. MCCCXC’.

Provenance: R.D. Steedman, Nescastle-upon-Tyne bookseller; R. David Parsons, with book-label.

$9500 Crittenden, ‘A Bibliography of the First Fleet’, 181; Ferguson, 90; not in the catalogue of the Hill collection; Wantrup, p. 62.

[4504400 at hordern.com]

53.

SCOTTISH MARTYRS.

The Reports of the Committee of Secrecy of the House of Commons‌ Octavo, in a neat cloth binding, leather label. Edinburgh, Bell & Bradfute and W. Creech, 1794.

Evidence used to incriminate for sedition Important primary source for the sedition trials of the so-called Scottish martyrs, namely Thomas Muir, Maurice Margarot, Joseph Gerrald, William Skirving and the Reverend Thomas Fyshe Palmer. Printed in Edinburgh for the reading public, these reports were originally commissioned for the House of Commons, and collect a great deal of information and primary evidence used in the famous sedition trials. This book comprises both the first and second reports, in addition to the comprehensive appendices detailing papers found in the possession of members of the Society for Constitutional Information, and the London Corresponding Society. Much of this material was used to incriminate and charge those persons deemed seditious, who were ultimately transported to Botany Bay. The extent and intensity of the investigation sheds some light on the complex espionage deployed, and the widespread anxiety fermenting in the politically charged atmosphere of the late eighteenth-century.

In his Bibliography of Australia, Ferguson accords this publication the headpiece of the Scottish martyr saga (F 195), and includes an entire page of supplementary biographical and historical references. $1485 Ferguson, 195; Goldsmiths, 16119 and 16121 (House of Commons printing).

[4504474 at hordern.com]

54.

[SCOTTISH MARTYRS] PALMER, Thomas Fyshe.

A Narrative of the Sufferings of T.F. Palmer, and W. Skirving…

Octavo, xii, 13-80pp. (last page advertisements), bookplate of F.G. Coles; originally stitch-sewn with the marks visible in the gutter, very good in polished tan half calf by Sangorski, red spine label. Cambridge, Benjamin Flower, 1797.

Mutiny on the Surprise, by a friend of John White Second edition, revised and expanded with a newly printed letter to Governor Hunter: the most detailed and important eighteenth-century account of life on board a convict ship, written by a political thinker considered ‘probably the most cultured of those who came to New South Wales in the early years of settlement’ (ADB).

This rare account was written by one of the famous Scottish Martyrs.

Unlike the more commonly seen accounts of the trials of the Martyrs published in Scotland in the earlier 1790s, this work is a detailed description of the troubled voyage of 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 from Sydney Cove.

‘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). 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. 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 second edition is printed from the same formes as the first (with the minor addition of a footnote to the preface), but is important for the addition of the concluding six pages, “A Letter from Messrs. Muir, Palmer, and Skirving, to Governor Hunter” dated 14 October 1795, and also printing a note of receipt forwarded by David Collins. 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).

Provenance: The F.G. Coles copy, with bookplate, sold in 1965 for £80.

$4400

Ferguson, 255.

[4504464 at hordern.com]

55.

WENDEL, Robert. TROEDEL, Charles, publisher.

New South Wales Album.

Oblong quarto, with 22 chromolithographs, each accompanied by a leaf of text; original half brown morocco and cloth, front cover lettered and decorated in gilt. Sydney, Charles Troedel & Co., 1878.

Troedel’s Album complete with the History of NSW A good copy of this rare illustrated work depicting New South Wales, the images after original work by Robert Wendel. “Troedel and Company’s New South Wales Album, published in about 1878, is a very rare volume of twenty-two chromolithographed views, each with an accompanying leaf of letterpress description… clean and complete copies in good condition are only very rarely to be found… (Wantrup).

Charles Troedel (1836-1906), although not the first of Melbourne’s lithographers, is considered its most distinguished; his principal work was The Melbourne Album published in 1863. By 1877 Charles Troedel and Co. was trading in Sydney, though this album is the only example of work completed by the Sydney office. The New South Wales Album is a fine example of the use of local chromolithography in book illustration, and complete copies are rare. Troedel states in the preface, ‘the art of chromo-lithography has been used in the production of these views, as by it, the lights, shades and colours of nature are truthfully displayed and thus the whole life of the landscape is preserved…’.

There is some variation between copies and issues of the work. This copy does not begin with a “Letter of commendation from Sir Hercules Robinson� mentioned by Ferguson, opening instead with the leaf of Preface (verso blank). It does however have the separate 27-page History of New South Wales not present in all examples, together with the twelve inter-leaves of double-sided advertisements, one of them a chromilithograph, not present in the last copy that we handled. $7200 Ferguson, 17330; Wantrup, 265.

[4504452 at hordern.com]

56.

WHITE, John.

Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales.

Quarto, engraved title and 65 handcoloured plates; bound with the list of subscribers, early owner’s inscription on first page of text; a remarkably large copy with wide margins, completely uncut; in a good modern calf binding. London, J. Debrett, 1790.

Sarah Stone and Thomas Watling depict the colony’s natural history A superb and very large untrimmed copy of the rare coloured issue. This is the deluxe issue of the first edition of this famous First Fleet book in which the plates were coloured by hand. Especially in this form, White’s Journal is one of the most beautiful of Australian colour-plate books, and one of the most attractive, as well as one of the earliest, Australian bird books.

The book was an immediate success on publication, with subscribers alone accounting for seven hundred copies. It is a travel and ornithological classic by a medical voyager: John White was chief surgeon of the First Fleet, and was particularly successful in that he overcame serious medical problems in appalling conditions both on the voyage out and when the settlement was founded.

He was also a keen amateur naturalist and after arriving at Port Jackson found time to accompany Phillip on two journeys of exploration. On joining the First Fleet he had begun to keep a journal in which he made notes about birds in the new colony. It was this manuscript which formed the nucleus of his journal.

The natural history content makes White’s particularly noteworthy amongst the First Fleet journals. Many of the plates were drawn in England by leading natural history artists of the day, such as Sarah Stone and Frederick Nodder, from original sketches done in the colony. White’s interest in natural history continued until he left New South Wales in December 1794. When the convict artist Thomas Watling arrived in the colony in October 1792 he was assigned to White and in the next two years made many drawings of birds for him. It is possible that White himself had some skill as an artist and that he was responsible for the original sketches of some of the engravings here.

White’s journal also contains a good description of the voyage from London, with long, detailed accounts of the stops at Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town and of the colonial voyages to Norfolk Island.

Provenance: Caroline Grevis (1774-1818), inscription on first page of text dated 30 December 1815; Alan Wambeek, modern bookplate.

As Wantrup points out in a lengthy discussion in Australian Rare Books, the number of “points” that have interested collectors in the past are really rather pointless now that many copies have been properly described. However in the interest of completeness, we note that this copy: 1) has the standard form of the List of Plates; 2) has the List of Subscribers, which is not always present; 3) has the draughtsmen’s names somewhat faintly printed (as we know to be normal) but certainly not deteriorated; and 4) has the earlier uncancelled state of the Wattled Merops text on p.240, no longer thought to be the great rarity that it once was. This copy does not contain 4 pp. advertisements sometimes found but by no means present in all copies. $22,500 Crittenden, ‘A Bibliography of the First Fleet’, 248; Ferguson, 97; Hill, 1858; Mathews, Supplement; Nissen, 4390; Wantrup, 17 (and see long discussion in text).

[4504411 at hordern.com]

Illustrations: Front cover: “View upon the Napean River� from Views in Australia by Joseph Lycett, 1825 (no.48); Back cover: Vignette of a lyrebird from An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales by David Collins, 1804 (no. 12)

First published in 2019 Hordern House Rare Books Anne McCormick anne@hordern.com Derek McDonnell derek@hordern.com Rachel Robarts rachel@hordern.com Tory Page tory@hordern.com Ellie Aroney ellie@hordern.com Rogerio Blanc-Ramos rogerio@hordern.com Matthew Fishburn (consultant) Anthony Payne (London representative) Level 2, 255 Riley Street Surry Hills Sydney, NSW 2010 Australia PO Box 588, Darlinghurst NSW 1300 Australia Hordern House Rare Books Pty. Ltd. ACN 050 963 669 www.hordern.com | rare@hordern.com | Tel: +61 2 9356 4411