An Account of a Voyage to… [and] The History of New South Wales…
An Account of a Voyage to New South Wales … [and] The History of New South Wales including Botany Bay, Port Jackson, Parramatta, Sydney and all its Dependancies…

London: Jones, 1810.

Two volumes, octavo; with two coloured title-pages, two frontispieces (one coloured) and twenty-five fine coloured plates; both works completely uncut in original boards, later spines with title-labels; handsome matching leather-backed slipcases.

Uncut in original boards: with the earliest coloured plates of the settlement

A very attractive uncut set of the joint publication of Barrington's two famous works, distinctly rare in this well-preserved original condition. Various editions of the Voyage had appeared from 1790 onwards, while an earlier version of the History appeared in 1802. In 1810 this joint edition, heavily illustrated and with expanded texts, was prepared by the London publisher Jones.

A very attractive uncut set of the joint publication of Barrington's two famous works, distinctly rare in this well-preserved original condition. Various editions of the Voyage had appeared from 1790 onwards, while an earlier version of the History appeared in 1802. In 1810 this joint edition, heavily illustrated and with expanded texts, was prepared by the London publisher Jones.

The History has in total seventeen full-page plates; when first published in 1802 these were among the earliest engravings (and the first coloured images) to show proper settlement in New South Wales. The matching Voyage volume provides considerable detail on eighteenth-century New South Wales not available elsewhere. It too is illustrated with full-page coloured plates, and a portrait of the notorious "author".

Barrington had been transported on the Third Fleet of 1791, already a legend as a rogue, and over the next decade English publishers used his notoriety to produce books on transportation and the new colony for a public eager for information. Despite questions about its actual authorship, the full two-volume work represents a substantial and important account of early New South Wales. The preface claims with some justice that 'no prior attempt has been made to produce a complete history of the Country itself, from its discovery, and an account of its inhabitants, their customs and manners…'.

Transported to New South Wales on the Third Fleet of 1791, Barrington was already a legendary figure in England as a notorious but highly skilled pickpocket. His trial was of huge interest to the public; popular interest in New South Wales and the fate of the transported convicts encouraged the publishers' appetite; they compiled information from various sources, mainly from the expensive First Fleet quartos but also from official reports as well as the popular press, to make these cheaper and thus more widely read accounts. It is quite reasonable to suggest that the little most people in Great Britain knew about New South Wales derived chiefly from one or another of the Barrington books. Certainly even if the entire "Barrington" canon is a concoction from other sources, the 80 entries in Ferguson's bibliography demonstrate the great reach that his accounts had among contemporary readers.

A new supplement for this edition of the History 'rehashed a number of travel accounts that had appeared in the press in the first decade of the nineteenth century, along with sketches of "Remarkable Persons" in the antipodes, including William Bligh, the "Scottish Martyrs", and one George Bruce, "an Englishman, married to a Princess of New Zealand"…'. (Garvey). The preface's puffing claims of massive public clamour for a new edition is not supported by evidence of sales: Garvey shows that it was still being sold well into the 1820s.

Barrington's History has long been understood to be largely a concoction of material sourced from others published over a name infamous enough to encourage sales. Even as a concoction, however, it did provide much of the picture of the new country available to the reading public in Europe at the start of the 19th century. From our viewpoint today, the text and its series of coloured images offers a sort of easy exoticism mingled with wry and slightly nervous racism: "orientalism" in fact, in the modern definition. Neither Said nor those who have followed him have applied the term to the stereotypical and colonialist portrayal of Australia and its original inhabitants, but the Barrington genre does satisfy that definition. Nonetheless, the plates are charming, including the fine coloured view of Sydney that is used as the frontispiece. Five plates depict Aboriginal activities, and there is a series of ten plates of exotic natural history.

Abbey, Travel, 565n & 606n; Ferguson, 486 & 487; Garvey, 'George Barrington', AB47 & AB48.

Condition Report: A couple of edges soiled, but essentially in very good original condition, spines carefully renewed.

Ref: #3705009

Condition Report