Hillendiana (presentation copy signed by Donald Friend; Margaret Olley; Russell Drysdale, Jean Bellette and Paul Haefliger)

A collection of Hillendiana, comprising vast numbers of facts & a considerable amount of fiction, concerning the goldfield of Hillend and environs, with the results of many years of intensive and arduous historical research. Together with copious notes, quotations from the works of esteemed and learned authors also scurrilous verses & ballads, numerous strange anecdotes & true stories related by respectable eyewitnesses, embellished with many illustrations by eminent artists, and a commentary both grave and ribald, accurate and untrustworthy by Donald Friend. Sydney : Ure Smith, 1956. First edition. Quarto, gilt illustrated boards, in illustrated dustjacket (edges chipped, split along spine), pp. xi; 82, illustrated.

Donald Friend’s local history of the gold mining township of Hill End, N.S.W., where Donald Friend purchased a house and formed an artist’s colony with the artists who have signed this copy.

Signed by the author and significant painters who lived at Hill End to Sydney socialite and friend Patricia Bennet, her name inscribed on the lower free endpaper.