[CARTOGRAPHY] John Coles, Royal Geographical Society map curator : signed letter to A. C. Macdonald of the Geographical Society of Australasia, re. the gift of a large map of New South Wales. April, 1885.

Manuscript in ink, 1 page, small quarto (230 x 180 mm), on the letterhead of the RGS, London; dated 11 April 1885, the letter is addressed to ‘A. C. Macdonald Esq., Melbourne’; written in a secretarial hand, but with the autograph signature at the foot of ‘John Coles, Map Curator, RGS’; some off-setting and light marks, otherwise good condition.

‘Sir,

I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your large Map of New South Wales (on rollers), and to express to you the thanks of the Society for the donation….‘

Born two years after its inception, John Coles (1832-1910) would become a prominent and significant figure at the Royal Geographical Society in London in the second half of the nineteenth century, serving for twenty-three years as its Map Curator and Instructor in Practical Astronomy and Surveying.

His Australian contemporary, Alexander Cameron Macdonald (1828-1917), surveyor and geographer, was a founding member of the Geographical Society of Australasia, which was formed in Sydney in 1883, with a branch in Victoria added the same year. After the addition of Queensland and South Australian chapters, the institution became known as the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia from 1886.

Provenance: Autograph album compiled by Jane Emma Murphy (Balcombe) (1854-1924), “The Briars,” Mornington, Victoria (Australia); à Beckett family, Melbourne (by descent).