Item #CL169-53 [Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]. Robert Brough Smyth, Australian.
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]
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[Sketches And Notes From Australia, India And Great Britain]

c1889. Bound sketchbook, containing drawings in pen and ink, wash and watercolour, with text in pencil and ink, inscribed, dated and monogrammed on first page, some drawings monogrammed, dated and annotated, 10.6 x 18 x 2.2cm. Front cover and endpaper loose, wear to cover and spine, slight soiling to some pages.

Some of the sketches and drawings appear to have been copied into the present book during 1889, and are annotated as such, alongside earlier dates and sometimes the locations where each sketch was made. Inscription includes “To Mrs W.A.C. à Beckett on her birthday, 9th January 1889 (wishing you many happy returns of the day). This book speaketh and rehearseth of diverse matters – item history, psychology, meteorology, ethnology, philology and man and nature: item – in like manner it dealeth with geology, petrology, biography, botany, astronomy, alchimetry, and the making of puns. Good deeds and bad deeds are recorded in it. It is a foolish encyclopaedia of little worth – but such as it is it is cast at your feet O! Princess! 11/2/89.”

Smyth was also acquainted with Mrs W.A.C. à Beckett’s daughter, Emma Minnie (Mrs Arthur Merric Boyd). She was an artist and provided drawings of plants to Smyth to assist him with his book Aborigines of Victoria, London, 1878. Smyth, a talented man of many interests with a strong personality, was a civil servant and mining engineer who was Government Meteorologist (Melbourne) 1855-58, Honorary Secretary to the Board for the Protection of Aborigines 1860, Secretary of the Victorian Mines Department 1860-76, and Director of the Bendigo School of Mines 1883-87. Ref: NLA.

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Item #CL169-53

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