Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia

Presentation copy from Phillip Parker King to a fellow author. First edition, first issue, and a famous rarity. The British voyage commissioned to continue the Australian survey begun by Flinders, and to keep a weather eye on the results of the much grander French expedition under Freycinet, commissioned the same year.

This is a fine presentation copy of this work, with an inscription in the second volume to “J.E. Gray Esq. from the Author”. John Edward Gray (1800-1875) was a senior naturalist at the British Museum, a position which made him one of the central figures in the study of Australian specimens collected by the explorers King, Stokes, Jukes, Eyre and George Grey. Gray contributed a very important appendix to the present work, which is no doubt why he was given this early presentation copy. The second volume, of course, is where Gray’s work is printed, which must explain the unusual placement of the inscription.

We know that Gray must have been one of the first to receive a copy of this work, because this is the very elusive form of this important book with the publication date of 1826 on both title-pages. The book was properly published in 1827, with the title-pages reset to show that date. The only complete copy of this earlier version known to Ferguson was in the State Library of Victoria; a number of copies have appeared since that time, but this true first issue remains very difficult to find.

Admiral Phillip Parker King, Australian-born son of the third governor Philip Gidley King, became the navy’s leading hydrographer. His coastal voyages and Oxley’s expeditions inland were the great expansionary undertakings of the Macquarie era. Despatched to complete Flinders’ interrupted survey and firmly to establish Great Britain’s claim to the north coast, King charted the greater part of the west, north and northeast coasts of Australia and also carried out important surveys in the Barrier Reef. His hydrographical work is still the basis of many of the modern charts for the areas he surveyed.