Manuscripts in the British Isles relating to Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific.

Abstract

This book gathers together for the first time in one place annotated descriptions of manuscripts held in Great Britain and Ireland relating to Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific. The geographic range of the manuscripts extends from Western Australia to the Galapagos and Juan Fernandez, and a curve embracing the Marianas and the Hawaiian Islands to the Antarctic. In time, the work spans from the earliest Spanish voyages to the Pacific to the 1960s. Contents are as diverse as the letter from a noblewoman seeking a colonial sinecure for her husband, the secret instructions given to Captain Cook to seek Terra Australis, documents regarding the murder of Bishop Patteson, and the papers of a young midshipman who sailed on the notorious Bounty. Any manuscript maps, drawings, and paintings which occur with the manuscripts are noted. The work, which was jointly sponsored by the National Library of Australia and the Australian National University, gives the location of a vast amount of source material held in the great collections of the British Isles, national and regional, and also in the records of societies and businesses, and private holdings, many previously unknown. It describes the repositories, notes many books which have printed the manuscripts in full, records restrictions on the use of manuscripts, and is fully indexed. Its value to scholars is immeasurable.