Colonial Sketches, or, Five Years in South Australia, with Hints to Capitalists and Emigrants
London, Hall, Virtue and Co., 1862.
Duodecimo, viii, 167 pages.
Blind-decorated dark green ribbed cloth lightly marked, rubbed and bumped at the extremities; two trifling surface blemishes to the front pastedown; an excellent copy with the contemporary (and thus very early) blind-stamp of the Adelaide bookseller W.C. Rigby on the front free endpaper.
'I was offered some time before leaving South Australia, strong inducements to write a history of that virtuous territory which should be palatable to certain classes of a small community; but as I had no high opinion of either the colony or the principles on which it was founded, or its subsequent career, I could not be the partisan, at any price, of a locality which I could not conscientiously recommend as a suitable field of emigration for any class of my fellow-country-men' (author's preface, although he showed the cut of his nib on the title page: 'Castigat ridendo mores'). Indeed, nothing is sacred, so it is perhaps hardly surprising to learn that 'every copy available was purchased and destroyed by the Angas family' (Ferguson 10265, citing the note written in the Petherick copy in the National Library).
Item #80759
Price (AUD):
$600.00