Memorandoms by James Martin. Edited by Charles Blount
Cambridge, Rampant Lions Press, 1937.
Duodecimo, xvi, 46 pages with 11 wood-engraved illustrations plus a folding map.
Gilt-decorated cloth a little flecked and marked; pencil annotation to page 12 (noting an error); a couple of trifling signs of age and handling; an excellent copy.
Number 35 of only 150 copies hand-set and printed by Will Carter at the Rampant Lions Press. This is the first edition of this important convict narrative, discovered by the editor among the Bentham papers at University College, London. 'The quaintly told tale of a party of convicts, including a woman and two small children, who escaped from Port Jackson in an open boat, sailed up the east coast of Australia and crossed from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the island of Timor, finally becoming involved in the fate of such of the "Bounty" mutineers as had been captured by Captain Edwards at Tahiti, preserves the epic quality of the venture in the baldness of the narration ... James Martyn's [sic] story is a document of importance for the history of transportation and for the early history of Australia' (from the introduction). The wood-engraved illustrations are printed from surviving original blocks used by Somerset printer J. Poole around the turn of the nineteenth century, mostly to illustrate his chapbooks.
Item #139232
Price (AUD):
$450.00