Fought and Won
Adelaide, W.K. Thomas & Co., 1922.
Octavo, xviii, 243 pages plus 25 plates and a folding map.
Purple cloth lettered in gilt and decorated in black; tiny strip of the rear cover lightly sunned; top edge a little foxed; endpapers offset; a near-fine copy with the uncommon dustwrapper torn with minor loss.
Inscribed and signed to 'Mrs Von Rieben | With Compliments from | John Lewis'. John Lewis (1844-1923) was an 'explorer, bushman, drover, roughrider, pastoralist, business man, legislator, historian' (from the foreword by Ernest Whitington). This memoir contains much on the Northern Territory in the 1860s-70s. His father James accompanied Charles Sturt in 1844-45; one of his sons was the industrialist Essington Lewis. The identity of the recipient appeared at first to be straightforward: we presumed her to be the wife of Otto von Rieben (1863-1949), a former proprietor of the 'Barrier Miner' newspaper, who donated his home 'Attunga' to the Burnside Council in 1944; it now forms part of the Burnside War Memorial Hospital. However, his wife died in late 1920, and they had no children. Otto had a younger brother Hermann, but his wife apparently died in 1919.
Item #126904
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