JOHNSON, J.C.F

To Mount Brown and Back...

> cliquez ici pour voir l'image agrandie

Advertiser Print Adelaide, 1881. Octavo, [iv], 32, [iv] pp., eight lithographed plates after Herbert Woodhouse or Arthur Esam; original pink pictorial wrappers, slight wear to head of spine, but a very good copy. This delightful and rare illustrated work is an account of the author's trip from Adelaide to Mount Browne. The Introduction remarks that 'interest has been evoked of late by the discovery of alluvial gold in a district lying near the South Australian border, but which is to two-thirds of the community an utterly unknown land'.

Johnson, an Adelaide journalist, recounts with much humour his cross-country journey on his horse Mr Moses and provides a detailed and human view of country life en route and conditions on an Australian goldfield.

Mount Browne was named and first described by the explorer Charles Sturt who travelled in the region in 1845. Johnson crossed Sturt's route at Depot Glen 'close to where gold was first found in the Grey Ranges... at the Glen there may yet be seen the fragments that remain of the boat the explorer carried with him, wherein to cross the mythical inland sea of Central Australia...' (p. 16).

The eight full-page engravings together with the cover illustration are the work of two of the leading illustrators of the period, Herbert Woodhouse and Arthur Esam. Herbert Woodhouse was a member of the most famous family of sporting artists in nineteenth-century Australia. He moved to South Australia in 1880 and regularly exhibited in exhibitions both overseas and interstate.

An ephemeral and rare goldfields work: this copy is in excellent original condition, complete with the many engraved advertisements.
Ferguson, 10953.

• AUD 13,500.00 > autres monnaies
• Commande nro.: 403_149

• libraire: Hordern House (AUSTRALIA)