Media: BOOK - hardcover, 276 pages
Author: T. Hughes-d’Aeth
Year: 2001
ISBN: 978-0522849493
Publisher:  Melbourne University Press

NEW CONDITION, including the original dust jacket (a pencilled in name has been rubbed out on the opening page

Illustrated, notes, bibliography, index

Publication of the two-volume "Picturesque Atlas of Australasia" was one of the most significant cultural projects in 19th century Australia. Writers, artists and academics came together to prepare a book of unprecedented grandeur and ambition, and a publishing company was established to produce and publish it. Its 700 engravings on steel and wood were among the finest to be found anywhere in the world. A facsimile edition of the "Picturesque Atlas" was published by Lansdowne Press in 1974 and has been reprinted at least four times. The fascinating story of the conceptualization and publication of the "Picturesque Atlas" is used by Tony Hughes-d'Aeth, as a window through which to examine the late 19th-century Australian culture which produced it. He draws fascinating insights from a generous selection of the original engravings. Books on Australia's colonial history have always been popular with book buyers. This book will be read by social historians, art historians, scholars of literature and literary culture, students of Australian studies, and students of the history of the book and of publishing in Australia. "Paper Nation" is an innovative work of great originality and broad interest.