The complete first edition of David Collins's beautifully illustrated Account, the earliest history of Australia as an English colony and the most detailed and painstaking of all descriptions of the voyage and first settlement found in any of the early narratives. While the first volume, published in 1798, is scarce, the 1802 second volume is more difficult to find, and is of great importance 'not only for its detailed chronicle of events but because of its narrative of voyages and expeditions of discovery… The journals of Bass and Flinders are of particular importance since Bass's journal has never been recovered and… the accounts of inland expeditions recorded in the journals of John Price and Henry Hacking are singularly interesting. Quite apart from the exploration interest of these journals, they provide the first report of the existence of the koala, the earliest recorded sighting of a wombat on mainland Australia and the first report of the discovery of the lyrebird, which is for the first time described and illustrated in colour…' (Wantrup).

The complete first edition of David Collins's beautifully illustrated Account, the earliest history of Australia as an English colony and the most detailed and painstaking of all descriptions of the voyage and first settlement found in any of the early narratives. While the first volume, published in 1798, is scarce, the 1802 second volume is more difficult to find, and is of great importance 'not only for its detailed chronicle of events but because of its narrative of voyages and expeditions of discovery… The journals of Bass and Flinders are of particular importance since Bass's journal has never been recovered and… the accounts of inland expeditions recorded in the journals of John Price and Henry Hacking are singularly interesting. Quite apart from the exploration interest of these journals, they provide the first report of the existence of the koala, the earliest recorded sighting of a wombat on mainland Australia and the first report of the discovery of the lyrebird, which is for the first time described and illustrated in colour…' (Wantrup).

Collins had arrived with the First Fleet as Judge-Advocate and was secretary to Governor Phillip. His book is a valuable account of the early settlement by an educated and observant resident of ten years. The last of the Australian foundation books to be published, it is illustrated with full-page engravings prepared in London by the well-known artist Edward Dayes from sketches done in the colony by the convict artist Thomas Watling. They are the first views to have been published of British settlements at Sydney and Parramatta.

Uniform sets of the two volumes, in good contemporary condition, are of some rarity; this is a fine set, with its evidence of uniform early ownership, in a most attractive binding of the so-called "russia leather", distinctive for its lightly diced patterning, sometimes seen on bindings, particularly of quarto travel narratives, in the first decades of the 19th century,