NAPIER, Colonel Charles James

Colonization, particularly in Southern Australia.

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T. & W. Boone, London, 1835. Octavo; a very good copy in the original green morocco-grain half cloth and drab papered boards, the joints neatly restored, printed paper label on the spine. First and only edition of Boone's first Australian publication. Between 1835 and 1853 Thomas and William Boone would publish an outstanding series of the classic accounts of Australian travel, including those of Mitchell, Grey, Eyre, Hodgkinson, Stokes, Jukes, Leichhardt, Sturt and Read.

With the passing of the South Australian Act in 1834, the colonists petitioned for the appointment of Napier as governor. A hero of the French wars, he wrote this work to set out his views on the proposed colony. Finally, in May 1835, he was informed that the terms he proposed on behalf of the colonists were not acceptable to the Company, so he declined the appointment in 1836 to continue his military career.

Although Napier prepared the book from the writings of others, it is, like Samuel Sidney's almost two decades later, of interest as an attempt to present eye-witness reports of the first explorers and earliest settlers to a very wide public. Thus, with works such as Napier's, Ogle's on Western Australia, and Sidney's on the "three colonies", we see the seeds of the clichéd and simplistic perception of Australia as an antipodean Arcadia which did so much to colour the way the world at large and - perhaps regrettably - Australians themselves saw their continent for at least another hundred years.

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