Item #100625 An Octogenarian's Reminiscences. James BONWICK.
An Octogenarian's Reminiscences

An Octogenarian's Reminiscences

London, James Nichols, 1902.

Octavo, xvi, 368 (printer's device on the last page), [4] ('My Literary Work', with a printer's device on the last page) pages plus 6 plates.

Decorated cloth a little flecked; edges and first and last leaves a little foxed, with minimal light scattered foxing elsewhere; an excellent copy.

With the bookplate of Dr Frederick Lucas Benham (and the cancelled stamp of the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia). James Bonwick (1817-1906), 'teacher, author, historian and archivist ... More than sixty publications can be attributed to him and they reveal the major characteristic of his mind: breadth but no depth. Besides history, geology and anthropology were his most persistent interests, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1865 and of the Anthropological Institute in 1869; yet in those fields he was more a competent and industrious amateur than an original thinker.... His importance is twofold: as a teacher he was a pioneer of new methods which placed stress on the pupil's observation and experiment rather than rote learning; as a historian his great work was as a discoverer and transcriber of factual records, a labour which laid the foundations for later serious study and never received due recognition' (Australian Dictionary of Biography).

Item #100625

Price (AUD): $150.00

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