Author(s): Mona Gordon

Early NZ | Secondhand

Secondhand.

This book contains five vivid studies of famous people who came to New Zealand between the years 1769-1885. Three of them made the long and perilous journey by sail, and two, in the early days of steamships. In these 160 years NZ was but an outpost of Empire, a land remote from the literary and scientific world, and the subjects of these sketches have no other connecting link save that, venturing forth from that delectable atmosphere, they all set foot upon our shores.

Here moves the stately figure of Sir Joseph Banks, and in contrast, that of burly, bearded Anthony Trollope; enigmatical Charles Armitage Brown, the friends of Keats, and that wrong- headed but strangely lovable historian, J. A. Froude; while between them passes momentarily the martyr bishop.

Well illustrated of particular interest being reproductions from the water-colour drawings of Clara C. Gordon including a frontispiece in colour.

VG in fair dj. Light fading on the spine but the pages are nice and clean.