The History of New Holland – Volume with Two Maps

This important volume is entitled The History of New Holland, from Its First Discovery in 1616, to the Present Time. With a Particular Account of Its Produce and Inhabitants; and a Description of Botany Bay: to which is prefixed, an Introductory Discourse on Banishment, by the Right Honourable William Eden. The work was published in London by John Stockdale in 1787.

The volume is bound to style in 18th-century morocco over 18th-century marble paper board including 254pp, 2pp ads, and 2 folding hand-coloured maps. One is a world map illustrating the route of the First Fleet entitled “A General Chart of the Passage from England to Botany Bay in New Holland 1787”. The second is the entire continent as it was then known with an inset of Botany Bay entitled “A New Chart of New Holland on which are delineated New South Wales and a Plan of Botany Bay”.

This work was one of the earliest and most widely known descriptions of Australia. It was published at the same time as the departure of the First Fleet from England. The work is often attributed to William Eden due to the preface, but the author is anonymous but compiled all that was then known of New Holland (Australia). The work dealt with the plan for settlement of Botany Bay, natural history discoveries, and religious conversion of the native people.