first fleet eden anonymous (1 risultati)

Octavo, with two folding maps hand coloured in outline; a very good copy, edges uncut, in contemporary calf, gilt, spine neatly repaired. An important book, and a sometimes neglected precursor to the Australian First Fleet: this was one of the earliest descriptions of Australia, published to coincide with the departure from England of the First Fleet. "It is an extremely interesting work and an essential inclusion in all comprehensive collections" (Davidson). In discussing the fleet's imminent departure the anonymous compiler lists numbers and equipment as well as the principal officers, and there is also material in both preface and text about transportation, as well as an "Introductory Discourse" on the subject by William Eden which has often led to the misattribution of the whole book to him. This is an example of the important second edition, published the same year as the first and after parliamentary approval of the Botany Bay plans, and with a very significant new section: an additional ten prefatory pages appear for the first time in this edition, discussing in detail the hopes for the new settlement. The anonymous writer reports that many of the convicts awaiting transportation have embraced the idea with excitement: "strange to tell! there have not been wanting voluntary candidates for banishment to that remote shore.". The "Eden", as it is often called, was written "to present at one view a connected description of the whole country of New Holland". The book is clearly aimed at a public eager for information on the new colonial venture, and for details of Botany Bay itself, which is here described at length. This is the form in which many of the participants in the First Fleet must have absorbed what little information existed about conditions in Australia. The maps show the continent, Botany Bay and most interestingly the "passage from England to Botany Bay in New Holland 1787", highlighting the route that the fleet must take. The book is of some importance too for its Cook material: as Cook's bibliographer Holmes points out, "the greater part of the book is devoted to Cook's discoveries.". His charting of the east coast of Australia is here put into context in a form anticipating the actual settlement of the new coastline. .