[Rarebooks] fa: PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF NEW SOUTH WALES & VAN DIEMEN'S LAND - P. E. de Strzelecki -1845

[ArCh]

Auction ends Sunday, April 9. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/4aza4u85

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


P[awel] E[dmund] de Strzelecki: Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. Accompanied by a Geological Map, Sections, and Diagrams, and Figures of the Organic Remains. London: Printed for Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1845. First edition. Thick 8vo (22 cm) in modern calf-backed marbled boards, endpapers renewed, marbled page edges; xix, [1], 462 pp.; with a large, hand-colored folding geological map, 3 tinted lithographs, and 19 black&white lithograph plates bound in at the rear, one of which is folding (complete).

Important as the first paleontological study of Australia, providing a geological history as well as depictions (by J.C. and G.B. Sowerby) of fossilized flora and fauna collected by Strzelecki. The book also contains much on the Aboriginal inhabitants, including portraits by Thomas Bock of Jenny and Jimmy, two indigenous Tasmanians. The work was greatly admired by Charles Darwin and others of that ilk, and Strzelecki was awarded the founder's medal by the Royal Geographical Society.

Ex-library, but not obnoxiously so: ink stamps to the title-page, first page of the text and the margins of a number of other text leaves, and the versos of the plates and maps, but none on the rectos of the plates, and the whole is rebound in a crisp and handsome modern binding. Some foxing to the folding plates and two or three others, light toning to the edges of the leaves, otherwise the contents are very clean and sound, firmly bound.