The Dead Heart of Australia. A Journey around Lake Eyre in the Summer of 1901-1902, with Some Account of the Lake Eyre Basin and the Flowing Wells of Central Australia
London, John Murray, 1906 [first edition].
Octavo, xvi, 384 pages with 6 figures, plus 22 pages of plates (most full-page), 4 small folding colour maps, a map of Lake Torrens (opposite page 252, and omitted from the list of plates and maps), and 2 large folding maps at the rear ('Sketch Map of Eastern Australia Showing the Central Artesian Basin' and 'Sketch Map of Lake Eyre Basin').
Original light brown cloth (with the heart-shaped pictorial paper onlay of desert sand-grains); top edge gilt; spine lightly marked, with a very small hole rubbed in the cloth at the foot of the spine; endpapers a little offset and foxed, with a light waterstain around some edges of a large bookplate; minimal scattered light foxing; slight paper residue on the half-title where a newspaper cutting was tipped in; paperclip rust mark to two pages and a map at the rear; acidic newsprint offsetting to the verso of the first folding map at the rear, with an old paper repair to a short tear near the stub; a very good copy.
With the bookplates of James Edge Partington (1854-1930) and Charles Richmond John Glover (1870-1936); the occasional pencilling, mainly to the bibliography, appears to be by Edge Partington. Loosely inserted is a contemporary review of the book, and a small sheaf of relevant newspaper clippings from the 1930s.
Item #109086
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