History of Australian Bushranging, The Early Days
Sydney and Melbourne: Agnus & Robertson, 1900.
Softcover. Near fine. 7 x 5 inches, pp [viii], 202, + ca. 32 pp of advertisements, in original printed wrappers. Illustrated with engravings, portraits, facsimiles, and three maps. Designated "Commonweath Series No. 8" on the front cover. Some minor damage to spine ends, otherwise an exceptionally nice copy. Title page is dated 1900, but front cover and publisher's catalogue dated 1901, so presumably we have sheets of the 1900 edition bound with the later wrappers and ads. White, a professional newspaperman with an abiding interest in history, first published his four-volume work Early Australian History, Convict Life in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land between 1889 and 1891. He later published various parts of his the work separately and under different titles, including a three-volume History of Australian Bushranging (1900-1903), of which this is the first part. It covers the period from the beginning of British settlement to 1862. Although the term "bushranger" originally referred simply to men who had escaped their convict gangs and hidden out in the bush, by about 1820 it had come to refer to, as White puts it, "men who, some from choice and some from necessity, ranged the bush as freebooters, 'sticking-up' settlers and travellers and demanding in orthodox style 'your money or your life.'" Bushranging was particularly prevalent during the gold rush years of the 1850s and 1860s.
Item #21560
Price: $150.00