Description

Two volume edition, with the accounts of Bass and Flinders. First edition of the complete work, published as two separate volumes four years apart. The first volume, published in 1798, is scarce today. For some reason the second volume, which came out four years later, is more difficult to find; decent uniform sets of the two are hard to come by.

Collins had arrived with the First Fleet as Judge Advocate and was Secretary to Governor Phillip. His book is a valuable account of the early settlement by an educated and observant resident of ten years, and was the last of the Australian foundation books to be published. The book is illustrated with full page engravings prepared in London by the well known artist Edward Dayes from sketches done in the colony by the convict artist Thomas Watling. They are the first views to have been published of British settlements at Sydney and Parramatta.‘The second volume is of the greatest importance, not only for its detailed chronicle of events but because of its narrative of voyages and expeditions of discovery… The journals of Bass and Flinders are of particular importance since Bass’s journal has never been recovered and… the accounts of inland expeditions recorded in the journals of John Price and Henry Hacking are singularly interesting…’ (Wantrup).