William Harvey Christie Sold at Auction Prices

[CHRISTIE, William Harvey (1808-1873).] A Love Story. By a Bushman, Sydney: Charles Kemp and John Fairfax, Herald Office for G. W. Evans, 1841.

2 volumes, 12o (192 x 116mm). Errata leaf bound in at the end of volume I. (Lightly spotted throughout, occasional light marking, type on I, pp.178-9 and 182-3 lightly-inked.) Contemporary dark turquoise-green, diaper-patterned cloth, letterpress paper labels on spines, marbled endpapers (spines lightly faded and labels chipped and rubbed, minor marking on boards). Provenance : manuscript correction [?in Christie's hand] on I, p.9, l.15 ("won" for "were") -- from SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON'S LIBRARY at Knebworth. FIRST EDITION OF THE SECOND NOVEL PRINTED AND PUBLISHED IN MAINLAND AUSTRALIA. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED TO SIR EDWARD LYTTON-BULWER in volume I: "To, Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, from a sincere admirer, at, The Antipodes., Sep. 4 t h 1841". Christie was born in Sri Lanka and educated at Rugby and RMA Woolwich. Following a commission into the 80th Regiment he was posted to Sydney in 1835 and, shortly after his promotion to Major in 1838, he gave up his commission in 1839 for medical reasons. In 1840 Christie commenced a career of civil service with the position of Assistant Police Magistrate of Hyde Park Barracks. During this time he wrote A Love Story, which is "respectfully inscribed" to Lady Elizabeth Gipps by "a grateful friend" (p.[v]); Lady Elizabeth's husband Sir George Gipps had been appointed Governor of New South Wales in 1837 and in 1842 Sir George chose Christie to be Agent of the Church and School Estates, and Christie continued to hold various administrative positions in New South Wales, before becoming Postmaster-General in 1852. A Love Story has the distinction of being the second novel published in mainland Australia, preceded only by Anna Maria Murray's The Guardian (Sydney: 1838, cf. lot 145); "The tale, comprising love stories, moves on in grandiloquent language, extravagant in taste and florid in description. It is a remarkable production of the 'bush', and it would appear that, by his meditations on manor house life in England, the writer desired to compensate for the austerities and lack of elegance of Australian bush society in the 'thirties" (E. Morris Miller Australian Literature from its Beginnings to 1935. Melbourne, 1940, p.399). However, the novel also describes the writer's love of his adopted country--and his belief that its natural vigour would lead it to eventually surpass Britain--in the clearest terms: "Australia, that wonderful country, which--belied and calumniated, as she has hitherto been--presents some anomalous and creditable features [...] For her population, she is the wealthiest, the most enterprising, the most orderly and loyal, of our British possessions. There, is the aristocracy of wealth, to an unprecedented degree, subservient to the aristocracy of virtue. While she is stigmatised as the cloacae of Britain, the philosopher looks into the future, and already beholds a nation, perpetuating the language of the brave and free; when the parent stock has perhaps ceased to be an empire; or is lingering on, like modern Greece, in the hopeless languor of decay and decrepitude" (II, pp.236-7). A Love Story was issued in both one and two volumes; Ferguson describes the one-volume issue, and (in the Addenda ), a 2-volume set in his collection. Ferguson's 2-volume set is bound in black (rather than dark green) ribbed cloth with letterpress paper labels bearing the same captions as those on this set, and is, like the present set, a presentation set with an inscription dated 16 August 1841. Given both the tendency of 19th-century publishers to bind up remainder copies of multi-volume works as single volumes to be sold at a reduced price and the presentation inscriptions in both this and the Ferguson 2-volume set, it seems likely that the 2-volume issue of these sheets has priority over the single-volume issue. Ferguson 3173 (and Addenda 1784-1850, p.443, calling for a preliminary [?half-title] leaf in both volumes, not present here); E. Morris Miller. Australian Literature from its Beginnings to 1935. Melbourne, 1940, p.595. (2).