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. 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

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

London: John Murray, 1817. Binding a bit worn and backstrip rubbed but quite sound. Internally fresh and clean.. Quarto (275 x 220 mm), vii, [1], 526, [2]pp., with the final errata leaf, portrait frontispiece of Lord Amherst, seven fine hand-coloured plates, three engraved maps (one folding, two lightly browned). Old speckled calf. First edition, with fine color plates which do not appear in later editions. This is the authorised account of the diplomatically ill-fated Amherst embassy to the Chinese Emperor at Peking. Amherst refused to 'kow-tow' to the Emperor Khien Lung and was immediately dismissed. Nevertheless, the expedition itself was of great interest: on the outward journey the Alceste had visited Madeira, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Java, and Macao. Homeward-bound the ship was wrecked off the coast of Sumatra and a replacement vessel was required for the rest of the journey via St. Helena. There Amherst met with the exiled Napoleon, and a detailed description of their meeting is recorded… Read More

Papeete, 1930. Octavo; in the original printed wrappers, faded, but a very good copy. A very scarce book, printed by the government press in Tahiti, the first complete edition of the private journal of Maximo Rodriguez, who arrived in Tahiti in 1774 and stayed for over a year. This marks the work out as an important insight into pre-colonial Tahiti, and Rodriguez's journal is the earliest sustained reflection on Tahitian life by a European. It had previously been serialised in successive issues of the Bulletin de la Société des études océaniennes. The journal (written in Spanish but here translated) dates from the last major attempt by the Spanish government to assert their influence in the region. The voyage of the Aquila in 1772 had brought back some Tahitians to be instructed in the Catholic faith, and a second voyage of 1774 was mounted to return them to instruct their compatriots in Christianity. Rodriguez, a marine, travelled as an interpreter on this second voyage. His lengthy stay, so… Read More

London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1848. Octavo, frontispiece, 11 lithograph plates, and seven maps (four folding); a fine copy, unusually clean, bound without the advertisements in later half blue morocco gilt, top edges gilt. An elegantly bound copy of the first edition. In late 1845, with Edmund Kennedy as his second-in-command, Mitchell set out from Sydney in search of an overland route to the Port Essington settlement. Although he did not find the hoped-for route, over the next year he explored a vast area of unknown country in tropical Queensland, returning to Sydney in December 1846. As with his earlier expeditions, Mitchell showed contempt for official orders, preferring instead to follow his instincts. In this instance he seemed more interested in discovering the fabled Kindur River, one of his more enduring but erroneous beliefs. To justify his decision, he here represented his discovery of the Victoria River (which was in fact the Barcoo) as the legendary great north-flowing… Read More

London: J. Debrett, 1790. A good copy, expertly rebacked; some occasional spotting and joints reinforced.. Quarto, with an engraved title page and 65 engraved plates; old full speckled calf. First edition: the foundation of natural history of the new colony, John White's Journal is a travel and ornithological classic by a medical voyager. The handsome volume is "graced by sixty-five engraved plates, all but one of which illustrate the natural history of New South Wales" (Australian Rare Books). John White was chief surgeon of the First Fleet, and was particularly successful in managing both the difficult conditions on the voyage out and the early years of the settlement. He was also a keen amateur naturalist and after arriving at Port Jackson found time to accompany Phillip on two journeys of exploration. The natural history content of the published account makes White's particularly noteworthy amongst the First Fleet journals. Many of the plates were drawn in England by leading natural history… Read More

Melbourne: F. F. Baillière, 1862. Some wear and foxing.. Octavo, frontispiece and large folding map, handcoloured in outline; original yellow printed boards with linen spine; a very good copy. The quite rare superior form of the Baillière issue with the map handcoloured in outline and with the 16-page botanical appendix by Von Mueller. This is the first public printing of Landsborough's narrative based on official papers and reports. .