Hordern House

BARRINGTON, George A Voyage to Botany Bay... London, C. Lowndes and... H.D. Symonds, n.d. [circa 1795] & 1801

Octavo, engraved frontispiece and title vignette to the first work; a fine copy, completely uncut in original papered boards, spine partly defective, preserved in a folding cloth box.

A desirable copy of an early pairing of the first two Barrington Botany Bay works; entirely as issued, uncut in original papered boards.

By the time Barrington was transported to Botany Bay on the Third Fleet of 1791, his name was legendary in England due to his daring criminal exploits. Chapbook accounts of his trial were bestsellers, and unscrupulous London publishers were quick to exploit his notoriety to market a string of books on transportation and the new colony.

The first work to bear his name was A Voyage to Botany Bay, which first appeared in 1795. A number of editions were published in this form, some dated, some undated as here; all editions are scarce. So popular was this account that A Sequel to Barrington's Voyage was issued in 1800. It was quickly reprinted in 1801, at which time the publisher then released the two works together, of which the present copy is an unusually fine example.

Although these titles were certainly not the work of Barrington, they nonetheless provided considerable detail on eighteenth-century New South Wales not available elsewhere. Their popularity points to an English public whose appetite for news of the new colony was not satisfied by the more prestigious and expensive journals of the First Fleet officers.
Ferguson, 206 & 328; Wantrup, 26 (second work).

$A5500

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