An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales,

from its first Settlement, in January 1788, to August 1801: with Remarks on the Dispositions, Customs, Manners, &c. of the Native Inhabitants of that Country. To which are added, some particulars of New Zealand; compiled, by permission, from the Mss. of Lieutenant-Governor King; and an account of a voyage performed by Captain Flinders and Mr Bass; by which the existence of a Strait separating Van Diemen’s Land from the continent of New Holland was ascertained. Abstracted from the Journal of Mr Bass. By Lieutenant-Colonel Collins, of the Royal Marines; several years Judge Advocate and Secretary of the Colony, and now Lieutenant-Governor of Port Phillip. Illustrated by numerous engravings. London : T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1804. Second edition. Quarto (270 x 215 mm), contemporary calf, rebacked; front pastedown with armorial bookplate of William Ord; pp. xvii, [3], 562, [2 publisher’s advertisements]; frontispiece portrait, 23 engraved plates (including 3 natural history plates with hand colouring), map, folding chart, and 8 text illustrations; frontispiece foxed, title with off-setting; occasional spotting, the non-coloured plates generally very good (a few with light foxing); of the coloured plates, the Lyrebird has some minor foxing, the Wombat has a small surface mark, and the Mountain Eagle some light off-setting; loosely enclosed are an early nineteenth-century owner’s notes in manuscript (ink and pencil) pertaining to this volume, filling four sides of an octavo bifolium, laid paper watermarked JL.

The second edition of Judge Advocate David Collins’ journal of the First Fleet, with its striking series of plates illustrating Aboriginal people and their customs based on the sketches of Thomas Watling. This is the more desirable issue, with the hand-coloured natural history plates. The work of revising the two-volume first edition (1798-1802) into a more affordable single volume that incorporates information about more recent developments and events fell largely to Collins’ wife, Maria, after Collins was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the planned new settlement at Port Phillip.

Ferguson, 390; Wantrup, 21.