Antipodean Adventures
‘WALINCOURT, Vicomte de’ [i.e. FONTAINE DE RESBECQ, Eugène de].
Voyage à Botany-Bay … suivi d’autres épisodes. Limoges, Martial Ardant brothers [Louis and Eugène Ardant], [1865?].
8vo, pp. 94, [2], 23, [1, blank], with steel-engraved frontispiece; a few scattered spots; bound in publisher’s white cartonnage elaborately gilt with hand-coloured lithographic vignette to front board; very slightly darkened, a little bumped at extremities, endcaps chipped, else a very good copy.
First edition, very rare, of this light-hearted tale of a journey to Australia, in an attractive cartonnage binding.
Published under the pseudonym of the Vicomte de Walincourt, Fontaine de Resbecq’s Voyage à Botany-Bay tells of young Marcel, who travels from France – via Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro, and the Cape of Good Hope – to Australia in order to find his mother, abandoned there ‘in a moment of carelessness’ by his father (p. 55, trans.). During his journey we are given descriptions of Sydney and a potted history of the British penal system, before the story concludes abruptly with Marcel, still in Sydney, being appointed vicar apostolic.
The remaining stories are titled ‘Rosine’ and ‘Le dévouement d’un fils’.
OCLC finds copies at the British Library and Bibliothèque nationale only.