Item #142461 A Successful Exploration through the Interior of Australia, from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. From the Journals and Letters of William John Wills. Edited by his Father, William Wills. Burke, Wills.
A Successful Exploration through the Interior of Australia, from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. From the Journals and Letters of William John Wills. Edited by his Father, William Wills
A Successful Exploration through the Interior of Australia, from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. From the Journals and Letters of William John Wills. Edited by his Father, William Wills
A Successful Exploration through the Interior of Australia, from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. From the Journals and Letters of William John Wills. Edited by his Father, William Wills
A Successful Exploration through the Interior of Australia, from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. From the Journals and Letters of William John Wills. Edited by his Father, William Wills
A Successful Exploration through the Interior of Australia, from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. From the Journals and Letters of William John Wills. Edited by his Father, William Wills

A Successful Exploration through the Interior of Australia, from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. From the Journals and Letters of William John Wills. Edited by his Father, William Wills

London, Richard Bentley, 1863.

Octavo, xii, 396, [32] (publisher's catalogue) pages plus 2 plates (the second with a tissue-guard) and a folding map.

Original green patterned cloth lettered and decorated in gilt on the spine, and decorated extensively in blind on both sides; cloth slightly rubbed and bumped at the extremities, with minimal wear to the head of the rear joint and the foot of the spine; top and leading edges uncut; some foxing, but confined mainly to the half-title, frontispiece and title leaf, and the leaves adjacent to the folding map (which has an old paper repair on the verso to a short tear near the head of the stub); a very good copy.

The first issue of the first edition, with the inappositely festive endpapers and the 32-page publisher's catalogue.

Wantrup 172a (and page 313: 'the volume is 'generally found ... with chocolate-coloured endpapers. Some variant copies ... were supplied with brightly-coloured "wall-paper" endpapers which resemble patterned gift-wrapping paper. In view of the grisly outcome of the Burke and Wills expedition these cheerful, if somewhat garish, endpapers are without doubt the single most outstanding example of thoroughly unsympathetic and inappropriate publisher's binding to be found on an Australian book. No such copy should be passed by').

Item #142461

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