One of the greatest classics of Australian exploration and discovery and scarce on the market: a handsome set, in fine condition, with the atlas in its preferred largest "elephant folio" format and all of the maps in their first issue state. The text volumes are in superb and distinctive Irish bindings of the period.

One of the greatest classics of Australian exploration and discovery and scarce on the market: a handsome set, in fine condition, with the atlas in its preferred largest "elephant folio" format and all of the maps in their first issue state. The text volumes are in superb and distinctive Irish bindings of the period.

This splendid book gives the official narrative of the classic voyage of discovery made by Flinders in the Investigator, "an enlightening and fascinating story of brilliant navigation and discovery" (DNB). As a boy Flinders longed to go to sea, an ambition realised when he sailed as a midshipman on Bligh's second breadfruit voyage. Flinders distinguished himself during the voyage which was, incidentally, the first time that the great navigator visited Tasmania.

The voyage of the Investigator was a full-scale expedition to discover and explore the entire coastline of Australia (which was the name that Flinders himself preferred and championed). Flinders was the first to circumnavigate the continent, finally establishing that Australia was one large island and not, as had previously been speculated, divided by a navigable central strait.

His classic account of the voyage could only be published in 1814, the delay caused of course by his imprisonment by the French on Mauritius, meaning that, ironically, the French, even though they took their time to get it into print, managed to produce their account of the contemporaneous Baudin voyage some years before Flinders's account could appear. The traditional myth, however, that Flinders was shown the first copy of his book as he lay on his deathbed is now known to be nonsense: apart from anything else, we have handled what was clearly a lifetime presentation copy of the voyage classic.

The two magisterial text volumes and accompanying atlas form the complete record of the expedition with an authoritative introductory history of maritime exploration in Australian waters from the earliest times. The text contains a day-by-day account of the Investigator voyage and Flinders's later voyages on the Porpoise and the Cumberland. Robert Brown's "General Remarks, geographical and systematical, on the Botany of Terra Australis," which is illustrated by Ferdinand Bauer's botanical plates in the atlas, is printed in an appendix in the second volume.

The text is illustrated by William Westall's nine engraved plates in the text and two double-page plates of coastal views in the atlas. These are in many cases the very earliest views of the places visited and discovered on the voyage. Flinders's charts in the atlas were of such accuracy that they continued to be issued by the Admiralty for decades and form the basis of all modern charts of Australia. All the charts in the atlas here bear the imprint "W. & G. Nicol Pall Mall… 1814", an important point that identifies them as being in the first issue form. Copies of the atlas exist in elephant folio format (as here), or the more conventional regular sized folio, whose size required that the charts be more folded and the botanical plates folded in half, whereas here they are in the much-preferred unfolded format.

"Flinders's Voyage to Terra Australis is the most outstanding book on the coastal exploration of Australia. It is the centrepiece in any collection of books dealing with Australian coastal discovery. Such is the historical importance of this monumental work that no general collection of Australian books could be considered complete without it" (Wantrup).