Catalogue 75

Highlights are a first edition of Richard Eden’s Decades of the Newe Worlde (1555), the first collection of voyages in English; a first edition of the first book on Australia, Pelsaert’s narrative of the wreck of the Batavia (1647); three VOC Batavian imprints (1668-69), the earliest known examples of printing in the East Indies; a first edition of Sparrman’s account of Cook’s second voyage, with specimens of tapa cloth collected on the voyage in Tahiti and Tonga; an 1860s photograph album of Hong Kong, Shanghai and Siam; and the Kelmscott Chaucer, recognised as “the finest book printed since the Gutenberg Bible”. The catalogue covers a wide range of subjects including exploration, missionaries, ethnology, ornithology, literature, linguistics and 20th century art.

 

 

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