THE ENDEAVOUR JOURNAL OF JOSEPH BANKS, 1768-1771 by Banks, Joseph - 1962

Sydney: Trustees of the British Museum, 1962. Edited by J. C. Beaglehole. In two volumes. Volume I: Pp. xxviii+476; Volume II: Pp. xviii+406, 16 coloured and 86 black & white plates, text figures and maps (1 folding, printed in brown & red), appendices, index; med. 8vo; red cloth, spines lettered in gilt; dust wrappers, lightly rubbed, edges slightly split; bookseller's sticker at foot of upper pastedown Volume I, the pages faintly browned, bottom edge of leaves lightly shelf soiled; Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales/Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1962. First edition. *Journal of the voyage with Captain Cook in the Endeavour, which in April 1770 brought Banks to the eastern shores of Australia. The plates are mainly from drawings by Sydney Parkinson; the text illustrations are from Banks's own illustrations to his journal. Volume One of this set is inscribed on the half-title page by [Professor] Joseph Ewan, the leading historian of American botany, to the notable Australian landscape architect Mervyn Davis, 'on the occasion of our happy visit on 26 July 1974'. Ewan (1909-1999) has been credited with establishing the history of natural history in America as a subject of scholarship. He published numerous articles and books throughout his long career, and contributed to many others. His association with this edition of Banks's journal is acknowledged by Beaglehole in the Preface: 'without [his] professional knowledge . . . the proper presentation of the journal would have been out of the question.' Mervyn Davis (1916-1985) was the first woman to be elected a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Parks and Recreation, in 1964, and the first Fellow (in 1969) of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects. She had an abiding interest in botany, commencing the Catalogue of Botanical Collectors and Delineators in 1955, and assisting in her retirement with the catalogue of Australian Botanists and others who have contributed to the Collections and recording of plants in Australia.