[Rarebooks] fa: [SCARCE AUSTRALIANA] Kingston: THE EMIGRANT'S HOME or HOW TO SETTLE - 1856

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, May 13. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/7gb7wuv

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

William H[enry] G[iles] Kingston: The Emigrant's Home; or, How to Settle. A Story of Australian Life for All Classes at Home and in the Colonies. London: Groombridge & Sons, 1856. FIRST EDITION. Recently rebound in marbled boards and cloth spine with printed spine label, new  endpapers; 12mo (15 cm); ix + [3] + 238 + [2] pp.; with the half-title page and a leaf of publisher's adverts. OCLC 21456911; Wolff 3846; Ferguson, Bibliography of Australia 11188.

In essence a how-to book, disguised as a novel, for prospective emigrants to Australia, with chapter titles such as: Settlers of various Characters; Getting on Shore; Land-hunting; A Settler's Home; An  Unfortunate Settler—How he was so; The Church in the Bush; The Ups and Downs of a Settler's Life; The Results of Gold-digging; Trials and Tribulations; etc. William Kingston (1814-1880), honorary secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Colonization, and later to become a prolific author of travels and adventures, had written at least one earlier book on the same subject, How to Emigrate (1850). In the preface to the present work, Kingston writes: "Circumstances have much altered since [How to Emigrate] was composed. Then it was deemed necessary to encourage emigration; now it is perhaps important to restrain the ardour of would-be emigrants. I have, therefore, confined myself to two leading objects. I have pointed out the characters who are unfit to succeed as colonists, and I have endeavoured to explain to those who do go forth, the only sure means of succeeding in the new career they have chosen… Many of the characters in my Tale are from life, their names only being altered, and in several instances their letters, with little variation, have been printed…"

We can't vouch for the book's literary merits, but we can attest to its apparent scarcity: OCLC locates only 10 copies in libraries worldwide (at least one of which is described as a xerox copy). The present copy with a child's penciled doodlings on the half-title page and verso of the title-page which also shows some soiling; leaves uniformly toned with occasional small stains and spots of soiling throughout; several page gatherings with their fore-edges protruding slightly from the text block; otherwise sound and firmly bound in a fresh modern binding. An uncommon addition to any collection of Australiana.