The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, 3 volumes (First Edition)

A$1,500 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

One of the most ambitious and historically significant illustrated publishing projects ever undertaken on Australian soil. A monumental, richly illustrated attempt to give the young nation, on the cusp of Federation, a comprehensive visual and narrative account of itself. Andrew Garran (1825–1901) was, alongside his editorship of this atlas, a figure of genuine standing in colonial Australian public life: the long-serving editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and one of the earliest and most vocal advocates for Australian Federation. By the assessment of the National Library of Australia and successive generations of historians, these volumes represent the first attempt to survey the Australian continent and its neighbouring territories with a comprehensive cultural and historical ambition. The scale of the undertaking has attracted scholarly attention in its own right, most substantially in Tony Hughes-d'Aeth's monograph Paper Nation: The Story of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia 1886–1888 (Melbourne University Press), which examines the atlas as a defining document in the visual construction of Australian national identity in the years immediately preceding Federation. Complete sets in any condition are, as specialist dealers consistently note, now found far more often within state and university library holdings than on the open market. First edition. Edited and illustrated under the supervision of Frederick B. Schell. 3 vols., large folio. Half leather and cloth. Gilt t

• Binding: Hardcover

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