The land of the hibiscus blossom : a yarn of the Papuan gulf

With twenty-four illustrations by the author. London : Ward and Downey, 1888. First edition. Octavo, pictorial cloth over bevelled boards (edges rubbed), bound by ‘Novello’ with binder’s ticket, patented endpapers, previous owner’s name to front pastedown, frontispiece illustration by the author, pp. xii; 340, illustrations; a few light marks, a good copy.

A tale of fiction set in New Guinea, where Hume Nisbet had travelled to personally during one of his sojourns in Australia.

Nisbet was a prolific author who published no fewer than 40 novels between 1888 and 1905. He was a great traveller, and closely associated with Australia: in the mid 1860s, as a young man, he made his first visit to the Antipodes, where he spent seven years in Melbourne, Tasmania, New Zealand, and the South Sea Islands, painting, sketching, writing poetry and stories, and making notes for future work. Much of his later fiction writing is based on his experiences during this period. Nisbet managed to pursue an artistic career as well as a literary one: in the mid 1870s in Edinburgh he worked as a scene-painter; in 1878-85 he taught freehand drawing at the Watt Institution and School of Arts; and he also exhibited oil and watercolour paintings at the Royal Scottish Academy. His large-scale oil painting The Flying Dutchman is one of his best known artworks. Nisbet would again visit Australia (and New Guinea) in 1886, and Australia for a third time in 1895.