LAST ITEM HELD MATCHING THIS TITLE STATED:

London, Edward Bull 1829. xii+[2]+286+[2]pp. Small 8vo. Finden engraved title-page. Original boards worn at edges with early cloth backstrip and new (19th century?) endpapers. A trim and agreeable copy. Hervey's epic poem "Australia" occupies pp.171 to 251 of this collection. It has largely been ignored by commentators and bibliographers ( eg. Miller, Miller & Macartney and OCAL ) in spite of its considerable importance in the formation of the way in which Australians and the British came to interpret the emergence of a new nation. It is a high-flown vision of an empty continent, morally degraded waiting for the ennobling hand of British settlement. It echoes and reinforces the ideas in Wentworth's "Australasia".