Foreign Field Sports Fisheries Sporting Anecdotes &c. &c. from Drawings by Messrs. Howitt Atkinson Clark Manskirch &c. ? [The Supplement only being] Sketch of the Manners Pursuits &c. of the Natives of New South Wales.

This is a rare or used book from the Berkelouw Rare Books Department.

London: Published and sold by H. R. Young 1819. Tall quarto. Calf-backed plain paper boards with morocco title-label to front cover. Edges gilt. (ii pp.157-170). Complete with title-page; 10 full-page captioned hand-coloured aquatint plates each within a multi-lined border. Some marginal foxing and soiling otherwise fine and complete. An important early nineteenth-century plate book depicting ten scenes beautifully detailed and hand-coloured from Aboriginal life in New South Wales: 'Smoking Out the Opossum' 'Hunting the Kangaroo' 'Throwing the Spear' 'Climbing Trees' 'Fishing No. 2' 'Fishing No. 1' 'The Dance' 'Warriors of New S. Wales' 'Trial' and 'Repose' accompanied by paginated descriptive letterpress. Wantrup (1987) who makes a case for attributing the work to colonial Australia's first professional artist John William Lewin (see pp. 280-283) also notes its desirability as "the first Australian coloured plate book properly so called" "the first separate account of the Aborigines" (p. 282) and "the most attractive and sympathetic of the early European depictions of the native inhabitants." (p. 280)