A highly important copy of the Australian foundation book. This recent rediscovery is not only a fine example of the deluxe version of the famous First Fleet account, with significant additions, but it also sets the historical record straight: it is the original writer's copy of the book.

A highly important copy of the Australian foundation book. This recent rediscovery is not only a fine example of the deluxe version of the famous First Fleet account, with significant additions, but it also sets the historical record straight: it is the original writer's copy of the book.

While we may be used to thinking of the 1789 Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay as Phillip's official narrative of the First Fleet and the early European settlement of New South Wales, the authoritative "official" book was in fact written by the Reverend Robert Nares, who compiled the text at the request of the publisher Stockdale from the governor's despatches.

A lengthy manuscript note by Nares on the front flyleaf, along with a pencilled signature on the verso of the frontispiece, identify him and give further details of his authorship. Nares's name also appears in the published list of subscribers, an entry which presumably refers to this specific copy, one of the rare and beautiful specially prepared versions in which the 31 natural history plates were printed on laid paper (rather than the wove paper used for regular copies of the book) and finely coloured by hand.

Additional maps

Nares has also added two maps to this copy, one of them the rare and important 1825 first issue of the "Map of part of New South Wales" published by Joseph Cross, "embellished with views in the harbours of Port Jackson" by John Lewin. The composition of these 11 views dates from about 1817; later issues of the map removed the acknowledgment of Lewin's work. Nares remarks that the map "shows the amazing progress made by this infant Colony in 36 years", that is from the arrival of the First Fleet to the 1825 publication of the map.

About another map added to the volume ("New Holland and New Zealand" published in Smith's Atlas) he remarks on its depiction of "Van Diemen's Land, (not discovered to be an island 'till 1797)… [which] has latterly been colonized and very prosperously cultivated".

Authorship

In 1789 Phillip was of course still in Sydney. His despatches were sent back as soon as he could arrange it and passed to the publisher Stockdale, who commissioned Nares to prepare the account, much as Hawkesworth had done for the official account of Cook's first voyage published sixteen years earlier.

Nares did more than simply compiling, for example complaining in his note about Stockdale's choice of the engraved "View of Port Jackson" (p.62) that he had "...earnestly endeavoured but in vain did I persuade Stockdale to omit that wretched view...".

The "Voyage to Botany Bay"

The Phillip publication provides the official account of the first settlement of Australia. Based on the governor's journals and despatches and assembled into book form by Nares for the London publisher Stockdale, it is - as the official record - the single most important book to describe the journey to Botany Bay and the foundations of modern Australia. It describes the events from March 1787, just before the First Fleet sailed from the Isle of Wight, up to September 1788. There is a chapter dealing with the fauna of New South Wales, appendices detailing the routes of various ships to Botany Bay, from Botany Bay to Norfolk Island and from Port Jackson to various other ports, and finally a list of convicts sent to New South Wales. The book also contains some excellent maps by John Hunter and William Dawes, including the first of the Sydney Cove settlement, which shows in detail the buildings and "progress" which had been made by July 1788.

Davidson, who notes that "any copy with contemporary handcolouring is a rarity", summarises the importance of the book: 'Being the authentic record of first settlement the work's importance cannot be over-emphasised, and no collection [of Australiana] can be complete without a copy', while Wantrup notes that 'as a detailed and officially sanctioned account of the new colony, the first edition of Stockdale's Phillip is a key work and essential to any serious collection of Australian books'.

The de luxe coloured issue

For this rare coloured issue, 31 natural history plates were specially printed on laid paper rather than the wove paper used for regular copies of the book. Only the first and last of the natural history plates, the "Yellow Gum Plant" and the "Black Flying Opossum", were retained in the black-and-white versions prepared for the regular edition, as can be seen for example in the copy digitised for Project Gutenberg Australia (https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00101.html#phillip-55).

This deluxe version of the Australian foundation book, with its handcolouring, and the similarly specially issued version of surgeon White's Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales of the following year, are the most beautiful and the most significant books of eighteenth-century Australia. In their very limited coloured issues, they are among the most desirable of Australiana of any period.

Robert Nares

Robert Nares (1753-1829) graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1778. By 1787 he was chaplain to the Duke of York. His secular activities involved membership of the Natural History Society of London and fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries and Royal Society. He became keeper of manuscripts at the British Museum in 1799. He was a prolific author and pamphleteer on all manner of subjects, literary and political, publishing his own as well as commissioned works (Dictionary of National Biography).

From 1779–1783 Nares was tutor to Charles Watkin Williams-Wynn and his older brother, Watkin, living with the family in Wales and London He was Usher at Westminster School from 1786–1788, where he continued his tutoring of the Wynn boys and where he undoubtedly met Charles Wynn's friend Southey. In 1793 he was the founding editor of the pro-government review the British Critic.

Nares, Wynn and Tench

While Phillip's book was the first official account of the European settlement of new South Wales, it was in fact beaten into print by Watkin Tench's very unofficial A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay which was published on 4 April 1789, some three months before the Phillip account began to appear.

Watkin Tench's patron, and in fact the dedicatee of his second book, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson (1793), was Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, Welsh landowner and Tory politician. As the largest landowner in North Wales, and controller of many parliamentary seats, he was referred to, at least by himself, as the 'Prince in Wales'. All holders of the Williams-Wynn baronetcy continue to be named Watkin following a tradition established in the late seventeenth century. Tench's family were indebted to the Williams-Wynns, and the First Fleeter was clearly named Watkin in their honour.

This makes for an odd connection between the author of the Phillip account and the author of its rival publication, the two of them connected by their involvement with the Wynn family.

George Chalmers

Another of Nares's manuscript notes identifies George Chalmers as the author of the preliminary chapter, "Anecdotes of Governor Phillip". Chalmers (1742-1825), a Scottish antiquary, studied law in Edinburgh. He published mostly political works, chiefly connected with the colonies. Stockdale commissioned him to contribute to Phillip's Voyage in 1789 and in 1793 to prepare and edit Hunter's and King's journals for publication as An Historical Journal of Transactions at Port Jackson by Captain John Hunter. Chalmers' collaboration with Stockdale is well documented in Tis Treason my Good Man by Eric Stockdale (British Library 2005).

Chalmers is also listed as a subscriber to the Phillip publication.