Item #CL187-18 Duplicate Of John Cotton’s Letters From Australia Felix [“Fortunate Australia”] Of Doogallook Station, Goulbourn [Sic] River, Victoria
Duplicate Of John Cotton’s Letters From Australia Felix [“Fortunate Australia”] Of Doogallook Station, Goulbourn [Sic] River, Victoria
Duplicate Of John Cotton’s Letters From Australia Felix [“Fortunate Australia”] Of Doogallook Station, Goulbourn [Sic] River, Victoria
Duplicate Of John Cotton’s Letters From Australia Felix [“Fortunate Australia”] Of Doogallook Station, Goulbourn [Sic] River, Victoria
Duplicate Of John Cotton’s Letters From Australia Felix [“Fortunate Australia”] Of Doogallook Station, Goulbourn [Sic] River, Victoria
Duplicate Of John Cotton’s Letters From Australia Felix [“Fortunate Australia”] Of Doogallook Station, Goulbourn [Sic] River, Victoria
Duplicate Of John Cotton’s Letters From Australia Felix [“Fortunate Australia”] Of Doogallook Station, Goulbourn [Sic] River, Victoria
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Duplicate Of John Cotton’s Letters From Australia Felix [“Fortunate Australia”] Of Doogallook Station, Goulbourn [Sic] River, Victoria

c1843-1894. Fifty-six (56) letters transcribed in ink with various illustrations in pencil, in quarter leather and cloth bound hardcover book, initialled “F.C.S.” [Frank C. Snodgrass] on book cover, titled, signed by Snodgrass “copyist” and dated “Nov. 1894” in ‘finale’ [p237], 34 x 22cm, 328pp (book); 42pp (addendum). Leather rot, stains to boards, binding loose but intact.

Title continues “Born 1802, died 1849. [Copied] by F.C. Snodgrass. Letters extend from May 1843 to July 1849 – these being true copies from the original letters themselves now in possession of Lady Clarke.” A comprehensive family tree, showing Cotton’s relatives, including the botanical painter Ellis Rowan and the early colonist Charles Ryan, follows the letters.

Provenance: Casey Family.

John Cotton (1802-1849) was a Victorian pioneer, pastoralist and naturalist who arrived in Australia from London in 1843. He took up a station on the Goulburn River, Doogallook, and soon acquired “more than sixty sq. miles (155 km²) and expected to shear 10,000 sheep.” This volume presents a series of letters to his brother William in Ivybridge, Devon, England, in which Cotton describes his arrival in the Port Philip district, Victoria, the fauna and flora, Melbourne social life, the customs of the local Aborigines, and his business affairs, thus providing an invaluable record of colonial life in Victoria before the gold rushes. There are many illustrations throughout, often drawn over the text, including two native birds – “Australian mourning bird” and a “large species of crane.”

Also included is a handwritten manuscript entitled Pioneering In The Forties, by Frank Campbell Snodgrass (the copyist of the letters and grandson of John Cotton), which appears to have been published as a series in The Leader (Melbourne), circa 1905. Ref: ADB.

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Item #CL187-18

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