Songs of Central Australia
Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1971.
Quarto, liv, 775 pages plus a colour frontispiece, a large folding map (885 × 685 mm) in an endpocket and a tipped-in corrigenda slip.
Original blind-decorated brown cloth; a very fine copy with the dustwrapper lightly rubbed at the head of the front joint, with a tiny surface chip to the head of the rear joint, and a tiny closed split at the head of the spine. Suffice to say, we have sold upwards of thirty copies of this book over the past forty years, and we have not handled a better example.
The detailed four-colour map of Aboriginal Central Australia is based on information from Strehlow's field note books, 1932-1969; an extensive index is printed on the verso. 'The first complete account of the poetic heritage of the aboriginal people of Central Australia; an analysis of aboriginal songs as fully-developed oral literature, and their evaluation as authoritative documents of aboriginal religion' (from the original prospectus). One of only 500 copies of the original release, perennially scarce and, more importantly, of perennial interest. We have handled a number of copies of this book uniformly bound in black binder's cloth with the title and author's name in gilt on the spine and front cover, with 'A & R' at the foot of the spine, and lacking the dustwrapper. We are of the opinion, as yet unsubstantiated, that this binding constitutes a small remainder issue above and beyond the original release of 500 copies. All but one of these copies contained blemished sheets (smudging, offsetting) that may have been initially rejected.
Item #124735
Sold