Item #147175 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

London, Richard Bentley, 1863.

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

Original brown cloth lettered and decorated in gilt on the spine, sides stamped extensively in blind; all edges uncut; covers slightly worn, sunned and marked; plates and adjacent leaves foxed, with scattered light foxing elsewhere (and two small darker spots to one opening); a few other minor signs of age and handling; a very good copy.

'Bentley's Edition of Wills's journals is the most extensive contemporary account of the [Burke and Wills] expedition and must be considered essential to a collection' (Wantrup 2023, page 313). This example has plain endpapers (as issued) not noted by Wantrup, who states 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'.

Provenance: Charlotte S. Macaulay, with her ownership details ('Picton, November 1863') on the half-title page. Charlotte was wife of Rev. William Macaulay of Picton House, Prince Edward County, Ontario, and sister of Henry Le Vesconte, who died while serving as Second Lieutenant on the 'Erebus' on Sir John Franklin's lost expedition to discover the Northwest Passage. Later ownership details of 'Malcolm S. Stanley | Consulting Engineer | Sydney 12/9/1927' are written in ink on the front pastedown.

Wantrup 172a.

Item #147175

Price (AUD): $1,400.00

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