South Australia Illustrated (Limited Facsimile of First Edition, Signed)

This work was originally published in 1847 in ten monthly parts before being issued as a complete volume. It is one of the most significant and visually accomplished colour-plate books documenting early colonial Australian history. Of the sixty full-page plates, twenty-two are devoted exclusively to the Aboriginal peoples of South Australia and are supplemented by further ethnographic content across five additional plates. These renderings constitute an artistically significant record of Aboriginal life at a moment of rapid and irreversible colonial change, one Angas himself was keenly aware of even as he compiled it. Angas wrote in his original preface that he had "endeavoured, by pictorial representation, to describe the most interesting and peculiar features of South Australia and its Aboriginal inhabitants," having made himself "conversant with the manners and habits of native tribes, whose existence is unknown to the world."

This 1967 facsimile, produced to the highest standard by A. H. & A. W. Reed of Sydney and limited to 1,000 numbered copies, reproduces the complete work with a fidelity that has made it, in the assessment of specialist Australiana dealers, one of the most consistently sought-after facsimile productions of any nineteenth-century Australian colour-plate book.

Facsimile reprint of the first edition, London: Thomas M'Lean, 1847. Limited edition of 1,000 numbered copies, this being number 459. Imperial Folio. Half morocco and marbled paper boards. Spine with six raised bands, gilt-decorated compartments and lettering. Top edge gilt. Marbled endpapers. Colour illustrated pictorial title page. 60 full-page colour plates, each accompanied by a leaf of descriptive text. Facsimile reproductions of the printed wrappers of the original ten monthly parts bound in at rear. Some very mild rubbing to leather and boards at creases. Else, fine.

Please note: This is a large and heavy folio volume. Additional postage costs may apply. If so, we will contact you after purchase.

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Catalogue Number: HH000749