Tasmanian friends and foes : feathered, furred and finned

London : Marcus Ward, 1881. Second edition. Small quarto, original gilt decorated green cloth (boards lightly rubbed), all edges gilt, gilt decorated endpapers, pp. 259, illustrated with 8 chromolithographic plates and lithographed vignettes; a fine copy. Ferguson 12515.

An Australian natural history book for children written by colonial Tasmanian novelist Louisa Anne Meredith, and featuring her splendid illustrations. Having arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in 1839 with her husband Charles, Louisa ‘studied plants, insects, seaweeds and fish of Tasmania’s east coast and was an active member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and an honorary member of the Tasmanian Royal Society’ (ADB).

Tasmanian friends and foes includes a fictionalised account of an event which took place while the Merediths were living at Port Sorell: the disappearance in 1846 of three little girls and a boy in the Sassafras Valley, who were later found by Charles Meredith. The book also has some content relating to convicts and Aborigines, in addition to its descriptions of fauna.