The Life and Adventures of a Gold-Digger.

Well known c.19th rare fictitious colonial account of life on the Victorian gold fields published 1853.

8vo. 372 pp, numerous illustrations, colophon; London: Printed by J&S. Wade, Brydges Street, Covent garden. Bound in quarter calf, with gilt raised bands with the title and authors name set within red panels. Boards covered with brown marbled paper.

Owners name in ink at top right of title page, “Wm. Dibben / Fieldways / Camborne / Cornwall”

This is the re-issue of The Gold-finder of Australia with the same printed pages, but with a new title and publisher. Notoriously without acknowledgement, Sherer copied S.T. Gill’s Sketches of the Victoria Gold Diggings and Diggers As They Are, for the illustrations. He merely notes that illustrations are “taken from Drawings made on the spot”. Sherer was a quite prolific London journalist and writer who claims to have visited the diggings (but hadn’t). He wrote up this adventurous account on the basis of numerous published and unpublished sources. Wantrup