The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay; with an Account of the Establishment of the Colonies of Port Jackson & Norfolk Island

The second edition, and the preferred, of The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, being one of the most important and detailed accounts of Australian colonial settlement.

As Wantrup notes (p. 62), this edition (1790) is superior to the first edition (1789) in three material respects:

1. The text has been reorganised into a more logical arrangement
2. It incorporates as an integral appendix on the History of New Holland with Lord Auckland’s Discourse on Banishment, absent from the first edition
3. It includes the large folding hand-coloured Chart of New Holland which is absent from all the other editions — The map is one of the most significant early cartographic records of the eastern Australian coastline, delineating the colonial nomenclature of Port Jackson, Sydney Cove, and Botany Bay as established by the First Fleet. It is also one of the earliest maps solely focused on the Australian continent to include the discoveries made by James Cook on the east coast.

The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay; with an Account of the Establishment of the Colonies of Port Jackson and Norfolk Island; compiled from Authentic Papers, which have been obtained from the several Departments, to which are added, The Journals of Lieuts. Shortland, Watts, Ball, and Capt. Marshall; with an Account of their New Discoveries

Quarto, [ii] (engraved title page with vignette, verso blank), xxiv (last blank), [iv] (list of plates, last blank), 258, clxxvi (appendix, last blank), [2] (advertising leaf, last blank) pages plus the frontispiece portrait, 47 engraved plates and 8 folding maps and charts.  Manuscript signature (N. Powlett) at the head of title page. Despite the title page stating that the book is ’embellished with fifty-five Copper Plates’ (a relic from the first edition), a total of 56 plates are enumerated in the List of Plates. This total includes the vignette on the title page, and a portrait of Lieutenant Watts not present in the first edition. This issue includes the hand-coloured ‘New Chart of New Holland’ which is standard to this issue though not called for in the list of plates. With the integral appendix The History of New Holland from its First Discovery in MDXVI to the Present Time, and A Discourse on Banishment by the Right Honourable Lord Auckland.