Search Results: Titles starting with J from Hordern House Rare Books

London, 1835. Fine.. Engraving, 230 x 140 mm. An uncommon portrait of Sir Joseph Banks, after Phillips. Although evidently an accomplished image, and while clearly dated 1835, little is known about the production of this portrait. The engraver "Herdiviller" does not seem to have been recorded in the standard references such as Benezit; nor does this image appear to be widely held in institutional collections. .

Paris: Blaisot, 1820. Uniformly browned, chipping and wear to edges.. Lithograph, 266 x 203 mm. (plate size). From Blaisot's Galerie Universelle series, following the general type of the Dance portraits. .

Adelaide: Ordered by the House of Assembly to be printed, 1861. Folio, printed on blue paper, 24 pp.; with a large two-sheet folding map; neatly bound in later cloth, a fine copy from the collection of Rodney Davidson, with his bookplate. Rare official printing of John Macdouall Stuart's journal of his fourth expedition through central Australia, noteworthy for the discovery of the Finke River, Macdonnell Ranges and the geographical centre of the Australian continent. The expedition followed the disbanding of Stuart's party, which had assembled for prospecting in the Davenport Range. After finding no gold the men rebelled and were paid of in Chambers Creek. Shortly afterwards, on 2 March 1860, Stuart set off into the vast wilderness with two companions, William Kekwick and Benjamin Head. The party lost important provisions to flooding and suffered terribly from scurvy and malnutrition; indeed Stuart lost the use of his right eye. They discovered the Finke River and Macdonnell Ranges before… Read More

London: Published for Dr. Thornton, 25 March, 1800. Stipple engraved oval portrait of James Edward Smith above line-engraved view of 'The Pursuit of the ship containing the Linnaean Collection by order of the King of Spain', on the one sheet 480 x 350 mm., mounted; although with good margins the print has in fact been trimmed at lower edge with loss of lower captions (attribution to Russell, engraver Ridley's name, and the publication credit). Fine portrait of Sir James Edward Smith, founder of the Linnean Society, one of the foremost botanical artists of the eighteenth century, and author of the first botany of Australian plants. Smith (1759-1828) was one of the earliest proponents of the great Swedish naturalist Linnaeus in England, and the vignette at the bottom of this portrait shows one of the famous events of Smith's youth, his purchase of the Linnaean collection of books, manuscripts and specimens for 1000 guineas which he spirited away to London in 1784. In his later biography Smith stated… Read More

San Francisco: Publ. & lith. by Justh, Quirot and Co., Calif[ornia], corn[er] Montg[omery] st[reet]s, 1851. In excellent condition.. Original lithograph on blue paper, 223 x 287 mm; verso blank; laid down on an old, thin piece of card. Rare lithographic sheet publishing the sensational scene of an eager public watching, some helping by pulling on the ropes, as the newly formed Californian Vigilance Committee rid the world of a Botany Bay man, a so-called "Sydney Duck". The Sydney Ducks, a gang terrorizing goldrush San Francisco and wider California, were a group of 'Australian convicts who made camp in the rough-and-tumble "Sydney Town" on the northeastern summit of Telegraph Hill... 'James "English Jim" Stuart was 'a notorious British outlaw and convicted forger who had been sent to the Australian penal colonies at the age of sixteen and joined the rush to California in November 1849. In February, Stuart was one of two men accused of beating merchant Charles Jansen on the head and then robbing him… Read More

London: Colburn, 1853. Spines uniformly sunned.. Two volumes, octavo; a very good, largely uncut and partly unopened copy in original green blind-stamped cloth. The Russian explorer's classic account of Japan, first published in 1817 and still a fascinating primary resource in the 1850s, one of the most valuable works of the period on Japan by an actual observer. Virtually no other first-hand study of Japan by a Westerner had been published, though by the 1850s a growing desire to force Japan to open her hitherto closed doors meant that this 'new and revised edition' was needed: it would certainly have been read with interest by Perry and others as the United States Expedition to Japan was being formed. .

Paris, at the Jardin des Plantes, 1895. In very good original condition. Original drawing, 170 x 100 mm, graphite and sepia on card; signed lower left William Strutt; mounted and framed. William Strutt (1825-1915) was born in Devon, England in 1825. For a period of his younger life he lived in France, returning there in the late 1830s to study painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, spending much time in the Louvre with the works of Raphael, which would remain a lifetime influence. In 1850 he sailed to Melbourne where he became a founder of the Fine Arts Society (later renamed the Victorian Society of Fine Arts) and exhibited at the Melbourne Exhibition in 1854. Strutt excelled as an animal painter. On his return to England in 1862, and influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, he came to "regard the lion as the greatest symbol of nobility and strength" (Marjorie J. Tipping, in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, online resource). So entranced was he with wild animals that he travelled to North Africa to… Read More

Exeter: W.Spreat, 1848. Fine.. Handcoloured lithograph, 165 x 260 mm. Jigama River, now known as Pambula River, is on the South Coast of New South Wales. The river was first explored by Europeans in 1797 when George Bass put in to escape from a gale on his way down the coast. Bass noted the beauty of the place in his diary. The village developed to serve the early settlers in the locality. Some of the earliest European settlers, the Imlay brothers, pioneers and landowners in the district established their station on the banks of the Pambula River in the 1830s. Their land was bought by the Walker brothers in the early 1840s. This is a fine Australian view from a series of tinted lithographic plates (published as Sketches in Australia) of Sydney and Harbour areas, mountains and southern coastal regions of New South Wales, "drawn from nature" by Captain Westmacott. Little is known of Westmacott, except that he was a captain in the 4th (King's Own) Regiment, and that he spent the early 1840s in… Read More

London: Cadell & Davies, 21 June, 1814. A very good impression.. Soft ground etching, plate size 380 x 325 mm. on a larger sheet; ex-library stamp to verso, together with the relevant letterpress. A fine portrait of the great publisher John Boydell (1720-1804), the most important print publisher of his day, and together with his daughter Mary and her husband George Nicol, the initial impetus behind the publication of John Webber's magnificent Views in the South Seas. Webber's colour-plate book of the Pacific, the only colour-plate book relating to Cook's voyages and the last of the great Cook publications, contained sixteen coloured aquatints, after Webber's drawings, and engraved by the artist himself. The portrait was done by Henry Meyer (1782-1847) after an original portrait by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828). In the Georgian era Meyer was perhaps most famous for a Shakespeare project that included the establishment of a Shakespeare Gallery and the publication of an illustrated edition of… Read More

London: John Cooke, 1799. Slight browning, a little frayed at bottom edge yet good.. Copper engraving, 233 x 295 mm. Lord Sandwich, for whom Cook named the Hawaiian islands; after the portrait by Gainsborough. Cook's friend and patron John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792), was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in February 1748, and in three short years instigated a series of reforms of shipyards and naval discipline, but was bundled out of office in 1751. His notorious personal life, which included membership of the infamous Hellfire Club meant that he was often lampooned, satires which became vicious when he was involved in the prosecution of John Wilkes. He nonetheless returned to the Admiralty in 1771, where he quickly became the mentor and confidant of James Cook, a friendship begun in the heated debates about the outfitting of his second voyage. It was Sandwich who prevailed on Cook to undertake his third voyage when Cook had initially refused the post. This portrait, engraved… Read More

Orebro: Nils Magnus Lindh, 1807. Fine.. Two volumes, duodecimo, uncut set in original printed grey tinted wrappers with paper labels. Scarce Swedish edition of Turnbull's early trading account of New South Wales, Tahiti and the Tuamotu Islands. John Turnbull first travelled to New South Wales as a supercargo aboard the Margaret with his trading partner Captain John Buyers. Arriving in January 1801, Turnbull stayed in the colony for some time before departing on a whaler to Norfolk Island. Further trading ventures through Tahiti, Hawaii and the Pacific (including a disastrous wrecking at the Tuamotus) proved no lasting success, and by December 1803 both Turnbull and Buyers had returned to Port Jackson. Turnbull's book was the first serious account of commerce and trade originating from New South Wales, and was influential in promoting Australia as a venue for commercial success. It was widely disseminated throughout Europe; with French, German and Swedish editions published in rapid succession. .

London: Day & Haghe, 1840. Very good.. Lithograph, 195 mm x 126 mm (leaf size). Portrait of Joseph Holt (1756-1826), one of the most prominent Irish convicts of the early years of settlement at Sydney Cove. In 1798 Holt joined a band of rebels engaged in six months of guerrilla conflict near Dublin, but was captured in November of that year and sentenced to transportation. Aboard the convict transport Minerva Holt won the respect of Lieutenant William Cox (the man who oversaw the building of the road across the Blue Mountains) and became manager of his farms at Dundas and Canterbury upon their arrival. Despite displaying loyalty and great intelligence, Holt's seditious past proved a terrible burden: in September 1800 he was accused of treason and later acquitted by Governor King. Again in 1804 he was falsely accused of involvement in the rebellion at Castle Hill and sent to Norfolk Island, returning to Sydney two years later to work land he had purchased while working for Cox. Holt wisely - or… Read More

London: Religious Tract Society, 1885. An excellent copy.. Octavo, frontispiece and engraved plates, charming vignettes; in original gilt decorated green cloth. An unusually bright and fine copy. William Wyatt Gill (1828-1896) was an energetic English missionary active in the Pacific and New Guinea, author of numerous works containing valuable ethnographic descriptions of the Cook Islands and Rarotonga. Despite the author's obvious evangelical bias, Gill was an acute and intelligent observer of the indigenous cultures he encountered, and possessed a remarkable linguistic capacity that allowed him to significantly revise the native language of Rarotonga. Jottings from the Pacific draws principally from Gill's period of missionary work in the Cook Islands and Tuvalu and offers a compelling account of the assimilation of the gospel into Polynesian culture and day-to-day life. .

Amsterdam: Jan Jansz, 1645. Waterstains in margins but in good condition.. Oblong folio, 28 pp.; bound in full dark-brown oasis. First edition of one of the first Dutch voyages across the Indian Ocean, published as one of the separate pieces that were also combined to make up Commelin's voyage collection Begin ende Voortgangh. This is one of remarkably few printed references to the Duyfken, the tiny ship of huge importance to Australian history. Harmensz was in joint command of the third major voyage by the Dutch to the East-Indies, the so-called Moluccan Fleet of 1601-1603 which set out to establish a new Dutch presence in the East Indies. The five ships reached Bantam, Java, at the end of 1601 where they were confronted by a substantial Portuguese fleet of thirty ships under the command of Andrea Fortade de Mendoça. Harmensz's conquest of the Portuguese fleet marked a turning point in the history of the region, bringing to a close the domination of the Portuguese and Spanish in the Spice Trade to… Read More

Amsterdam: Jan Jansz, 1645. Oblong folio, 28 pp.; in simple modern wrappers. First edition of one of the first Dutch voyages across the Indian Ocean, published as one of the separate pieces that were also combined to make up Commelin's voyage collection Begin ende Voortgangh. This is one of remarkably few printed references to the Duyfken, the tiny ship of huge importance to Australian history. Harmensz was in joint command of the third major voyage by the Dutch to the East-Indies, the so-called Moluccan Fleet of 1601-1603 which set out to establish a new Dutch presence in the East Indies. The five ships reached Bantam, Java, at the end of 1601 where they were confronted by a substantial Portuguese fleet of thirty ships under the command of Andrea Fortade de Mendoça. Harmensz's conquest of the Portuguese fleet marked a turning point in the history of the region, bringing to a close the domination of the Portuguese and Spanish in the Spice Trade to Europe. Of special interest to us today is that one… Read More

London: Printed for T. Becket and P.A. De Hondt, in the Strand, 1771. A fine copy. Quarto; a fine copy in a Sangorski-style binding of half green morocco, spine panelled in gilt between raised bands. First edition of the earliest published account of Cook's first voyage to the Pacific: the rare first issue, with the leaf of dedication to 'The Right Honourable Lords of the Admiralty, and to Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander' inserted by the publishers to add authenticity. This was the first of a series of so-called "surreptitious accounts" of Cook's various voyages to appear in print: the Admiralty found it practically impossible to enforce their ruling that no unofficial publications should pre-empt the official and lengthier accounts of the voyages, naturally much slower in the press. In this case, however, legal action was taken against the publisher for using an unauthorised dedication, forcing removal of the leaf during publication. 'It is accordingly of the greatest rarity, and copies of the book… Read More

London: J. Debrett, 1790. Light spotting to title and dedication leaves; an excellent copy with very good original colouring.. Quarto, engraved title and 65 hand coloured plates, bound with the list of subscribers, with the 4pp. advertisements and pp. 239/240 (describing the female wattle bird) and 255/256 (the superb warblers) present as cancels; en excellent copy in old half dark brown roan and marbled sides. A very good copy of the rare coloured issue, the deluxe version of the first edition of this famous First Fleet book in which the plates, by Sarah Stone, Frederick Nodder, and others, were coloured by hand. Especially in this form, White's Journal is one of the most beautiful of Australian colour-plate books, and one of the most attractive, as well as one of the earliest, Australian bird books. With Governor Phillip's Voyage to Botany Bay... - the two books produced by rival publishers - it paints a remarkable picture of the earliest days of the colonial settlement. The book was an immediate… Read More

Adelaide: House of Assembly, 1893. A very good copy.. Folio, with two large colour folding maps; uncut in recent cloth. One of only 750 copies published: this rare printing is not recorded by Ferguson. Sir Thomas Elder, who had earlier financed the first great desert journey of Ernest Giles, in 1891 fitted out the expedition of David Lindsay, the celebrated Northern Territory explorer and surveyor general. In 1883 Lindsay had led an expedition into Arnhem Land, travelling to the Gulf of Carpentaria. He went on to explore extensively in the MacDonnell Ranges region before his last and most important work, this scientifically equipped expedition made possible by the sole support of Sir Thomas Elder. The object of the expedition was to explore the unknown interior of Western Australia between the routes laid out by Forrest in 1874 and Giles in 1875 'for the purpose of completing the exploration of Australia'. Lindsay's expedition arrived in Geraldton in January 1892, besieged by internal conflict: the… Read More

London: W. Watts, 1854. A very good copy.. Octavo, 3 plates, paper a little toned, mostly unopened; in the original brown cloth blind-stamped boards, lettered in gilt to spine, some wear especially at extremities and joints, a few chips, bookplate for the Hispanic Society of America. A very good copy of this volume from the Ethnological Society of London, notably including an essay by William Augustus Miles on the Aborigines of Sydney, with an accompanying plate depicting some rock carvings. Miles (1798-1851) is rumoured to have been an unacknowledged son of George IV, as the unexpected favour of William IV might be thought to imply. He served for several years as a controversial police commissioner in Sydney, during which time he also took up the study of the Australian Aborigines. His long essay here "on Demigods and Daemonia" is a very early paper on religion, artefacts and language of the Australians, with notes from sources like the First Fleet accounts, Leichhardt, and Lort Stokes of the… Read More

London: J. Debrett, 1790. Apart from just a few scattered age marks a fine copy.. Quarto, engraved title page with vignette and 65 plates; in a very good period-style quarter calf binding by Aquarius, flat spine gilt in compartments. This is a travel and ornithological classic by a medical voyager: John White was the chief surgeon on the "First Fleet", the expedition that colonised New South Wales in 1788. His Journal is one of the most attractive, as well as one of the earliest, Australian bird books. Many of the plates were drawn in England by leading natural history artists of the day, such as Sarah Stone and Frederick Nodder, from original sketches done in the colony. The book was an immediate success on publication, with subscribers alone accounting for seven hundred copies. John White was chief surgeon of the First Fleet, and was particularly successful in that he overcame serious medical problems in appalling conditions both on the voyage out and when the settlement was founded. On joining… Read More