Australian Rare Books 1788 – 1900

Melbourne : Australian Book Auctions, 2023. Second edition, revised and enlarged. Two volumes, 255 x 180 mm, bound in dark green buckram, lettered in gilt, with colour pictorial dustwrappers, pp. 1400, 148 illustrations (43 in colour), glossary of book collecting terms, historical price estimates, indices of persons and titles. Printed and bound in Australia on 100gsm Sovereign Offset. New copy, printed in a small edition of 400 copies.

The long-awaited revised edition of Jonathan Wantrup’s definitive reference Australian Rare Books 1788 – 1900.

‘The 1987 first edition of Wantrup’s Australian Rare Books 1788-1900 quickly became the internationally recognised definitive work on collecting rare Australian books of the Colonial Period. Offering a distinctive approach to Australian history and a unique perspective on the development of Australian society, in his eminently readable book Wantrup demonstrates a rare facility for making complicated things seem simple. This revised and enlarged second edition comprises the eight chapters of the first edition and five new chapters: a survey of beautiful Australian colourplate natural history books (two chapters); a detailed account of the French grands voyages to the south-west Pacific; books of the Australian gold rush; and, finally, an unconventional overview of the literature of colonial Australia. The work is completed by an extensive bibliographical Checklist describing over 600 books discussed in the text.’ – the publisher