Sir Thomas Livingston Mitchell And His World 1792-1855
Australian History Local History Biography Australian Studies Colonial History Exploration Cartography
Sir Thomas Livingston Mitchell and His World 1792-1855 is the definitive illustrated biography of the swash-buckling Scottish surveyor-general who mapped much of south-eastern Australia and named the Major’s Line, the Darling River and the Grampians. William Foster’s 593-page hardcover, first published in 1985 and now scarce in nice condition, draws on Mitchell’s own journals, field-books and dispatches to recreate the expeditions that opened the inland to pastoral settlement. Every chapter is stocked with period maps, water-colours, lithographs and fold-out survey charts—many reproduced for the first time—so collectors receive both a scholarly narrative and a visual atlas of early colonial exploration.
What sets this volume apart is its dual value as a reference and as a collectible artefact. It is the only full-scale life to place Mitchell’s controversial career inside the wider worlds of British military engineering, Enlightenment science and frontier politics, making it indispensable for genealogists tracing 1830s-50s land-grants or local historians mapping the old squatting runs of NSW and Victoria. The sturdy hardback binding and intact dust jacket have protected the heavy art-paper leaves for almost four decades; the closed page-edges show only light foxing typical of Australian production of the era, while the interior remains crisp, unmarked and free of dog-ears—details that matter to collectors who demand a clean reading copy that also displays well on a shelf of Australiana.
Because the first edition was never reprinted, clean copies now surface only sporadically on the secondary market. For anyone building a library of Australian exploration, nineteenth-century cartography or colonial biography, this vintage 1985 issue offers both the depth of a university-level textbook and the tactile satisfaction of a quality illustrated monograph—without the premium price of a signed or limited edition.
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