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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Collection of Martin Copley AM
• Sale Date:
  22 Oct 2017 ~ 2pm
• Lot #:
  87
• Lot Description:
  [PURRY, Jean-Pierre]. Mémoire sur le Pais des Cafres et la Terre de Nuyts [and] Second mémoire sur le Pais des Cafres et la Terre de Nuyts
  Amsterdam, 1718. Two volumes in one, small octavo, pp. 84 + 78, [ii]; later calf. First title a little dusty and with two early signatures, light marginal waterstain on a few leaves in the second work, but very good, crisp copies.
• Notes:
  The only published record of the European discovery of the southern coastline of Western Australia in 1627, when Pieter Nuyts in the Gulden Zeepaert surveyed some 900 miles from Point Nuyts in the west to the Nuyts Archipelago in the east ? names still used ? including the whole of the Great Australian Bight. Purry was a Swiss in the service of the Dutch East India Company at Batavia, where he found Nuyts’s report of his discoveries ? now lost. Because of the Company’s secretiveness no account was published at the time of the voyage and nor could Purry interest his superiors when he submitted a proposal to colonise the region. On his return to Holland he presented his case in detail in these two pamphlets, citing principally the ideal climate; in answer to the possible objection that settlement would dispossess the indigenous inhabitants, he offers both philosophical and pragmatic arguments. In the preface to the English edition of 1744, the translator records that ‘ Neither this Memorial, nor another which accompanied it, were well receiv’d, inasmuch that a friend of his told him privately, he had better get out of the way, for that some things had been observed in both papers which ought not to be made publick. He took the advice and went into France.’ Printed no doubt in small numbers, they are now of great rarity. Mackaness, in The art of book collecting in Australia, 1956, stated that ‘I have never seen a copy offered by a bookseller’ and to our knowledge, this pair, formerly in the libraries of the Melbourne collectors Ivo Hammet, his brother Rollo and Eric Stock, are the only examples to have appeared at auction in Australia in the last half-century: they were bought by Martin Copley at Australian Book Auctions in 2001, for $93,200.
• Estimate:
  A$60,000 - 80,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Books & Manuscripts

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.