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The short article plays on Banks’s youthful reputation at Oxford, his curiosity for the natural world and his experiences in the South Seas: ‘As nature has been his constant study, it cannot be supposed that the most engaging part of it, the fair sex, have escaped his notice; and if we may be suffered to conclude from his amorous descriptions, the females of most of the countries he has visited, have undergone every critical inspection by him...’ The plate is described in BM Satires 5146.

First edition. A juvenile Cook in French, describing his voyages to the Pacific, including New Zealand, Batavia (Jakarta), Tahiti and the Sandwich Islands. the plates being: Mort de Capitaine Cook (frontispiece); Indien courant un Muck; Habitans de l’Ile Mallicalo and Débarquement du Capitaine Cook dans la baie de Karakakooka. The appendix contains an interesting ethnographic essay ‘Des deux variétés de l’espèce humaine recnnues dans l’Océanie’, two others on the geography of Oceania and on previous voyages to the region followed by biographies of participants in Cook’s voyages (Cook, Banks, Solander, the Forsters, Clark and Bligh). Worldcat and Library Hub locate no UK or North American copies (though there is one at the University of Hawaii)

First edition, Bibliothèque des Chemins de Fer issue (of which it forms part of the second series). A fictional account of the voyage to Sydney, the convict regime, the Australian interior and the gold mines. Merruau’s list of sources includes the ‘Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the State of the Colony of New South Wales’ as well as Rowcroft’s Tales of the Colonies and Haygarth’s Bush Life in Australia. Ferguson, 12528 (first issue without adverts or, presumably, the Bibliothèque des Chemins de Fer series title.

First edition, scarce, dedicated to Jean-Jacques Rousseau by its Scottish author. Captain Cook had returned from his circumnavigation in 1771 to widespread acclaim, and Mercer’s poem reflects this, though he chooses Anson’s round-the-world voyage as the vehicle for his protagonist, St Preux.

First edition in French of Tales of the Colonies, presentation copy, inscribed by the translator. In this, the first of his two novels, Rowcroft drew on his own experience as an Australian settler. The work is in part a guide for prospective settlers and part a sensational tale of the hazards of pioneer-era Van Dieman’s Land: sheep-stealers, bushrangers, Aboriginal attackers, floods, snakes, eagles and wild cattle. Very scarce. OCLC lists 7 copies: Bibliothèque Nationale, University of Basle, National Library of Australia, State Library of New South Wales, State Library of Victoria, University of Melborne and National Library of New Zealand.