In May 1787 a fleet of ships carrying convicts left England bound for Botany Bay, New South Wales, where they were to establish a settlement. One of the crew on board the Charlotte was Watkin Tench (c.1758-1833), who wrote about the voyage of what was later known as the First Fleet. He remained in New South Wales, living in Port Jackson (part of present-day Sydney) from 1788 to 1791, and in this work, published in 1793, he gives a vivid, first-hand account of the early years of British settlement. The chapters are chronologically organised and discuss the many challenges settlers in the fledgling colony faced in staying alive, such as illness and lack of food and other provisions. He also recounts the often violent encounters and 'unabated animosity' between the settlers and the aboriginal people, making this work an important source on the colonisation of Australia.

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) became famous with his satirical Utopian novel Erewhon, based on his experiences as a sheep farmer in New Zealand and published, initially anonymously, in 1872. This earlier book, published in London in 1863 while he was still abroad, is a compilation of his letters home. Having obtained a degree in Classics from Cambridge, Butler had left England in 1859 with generous funding from his father, who hoped that making his fortune in the colonies would cure his son's ambition to become an artist. Butler was highly successful in his farming enterprise, and his letters provide both financial details and information on the practicalities of animal husbandry, pasture management and colonial life. Butler also explored Canterbury and travelled to the Southern Alps, and describes vividly the landscapes, flora and fauna of South Island. This classic source for New Zealand history also sheds light on Butler's later work.

Michael Davitt (1846-1906) was a prominent and influential figure in Irish politics in the nineteenth century. A fervent supporter of Irish independence, he was imprisoned more than once in England, but later became a Member of Parliament for Irish constituencies. In this book, first published in 1898, Davitt records a journey of seven months through the Australasian colonies, noting his impressions of the areas he passed through and discussing the political and social norms across the different regions. He examines land laws in many of the areas and describes the different industries then emerging. He also reports on the treatment of aborigines, ranging from 'exterminating the aborigines' in Tasmania to the 'efforts to protect them' in Western Australia, and finally focuses on prisons and prisoner welfare across the colonies he visited. This book offers a wealth of information on many aspects of nineteenth-century Australasia.

Matthew Flinders (1774-1814) joined the Royal Navy at fifteen, later claiming to have been inspired by Robinson Crusoe. He served under William Bligh, and charted the Bass Strait in 1798. In 1801 he was commissioned to chart 'New Holland', and so became the first to circumnavigate the island he referred to as Australia. After being shipwrecked on the Barrier Reef and imprisoned for six years on Mauritius on suspicion of spying, he returned to England in 1810 and began work on A Voyage to Terra Australis. He died the day after his book and maps were published. This biography, published in 1914 to mark the centenary of his death, was the first comprehensive study of this central figure of Australian maritime exploration. The leading Australian historian Ernest Scott (1868-1939) based his account on material held in private collections in France as well as on documents deposited in Australian libraries.

First published anonymously in 1863, this classic book recounts the experiences of Frederick Edward Maning (c.1811-83), an Anglo-Irish trader who emigrated to Tasmania with his family as a boy and later relocated to New Zealand. A self-styled 'Pakeha-Maori' ('Pakeha' is the Maori word for a white New Zealander), Maning acquired land and settled down with a Maori woman, occupying a tenuous position between the two cultures. Observing that the old Maori way of life was rapidly disappearing due to the increased European presence in New Zealand, Maning endeavoured to record Maori customs and material culture before all knowledge of them disappeared. Old New Zealand is a mixture of history, autobiography and anecdote, and the author insists all the incidents and people described are real. The language is informal, and the narrative vigorous and rapid, with lively dialogues and occasional Maori phrases. A glossary explains Maori words and concepts.

Originally published in 1884, this work by the relatively unknown 'gentleman explorer' James Henry Kerry-Nicholls (d. 1888) focuses on nineteenth-century New Zealand. It recounts the journey into what he describes as terra incognita, the area known as the King Country, almost exclusively Maori and little explored by Europeans due to political difficulties and Maori hostility. Travelling with only three horses and what he could carry on them, and accompanied by an interpreter, he endeavoured to cover and accurately record details of an area totalling 10,000 square miles; owing to good contacts, he was even able to meet Maori King Tawhiao. Writing in what now seems an imperialist style, he recounts a history of Maori-European relations, notes potential sites for European settlement, includes geographical surveys and descriptions of the landscapes, and supplies a map which gives the 'most complete chart of the interior of the North Island as yet published'.

This 1837 book was ghost-written by the young Edward Edwards (1812-86), later a key figure in the development of British public libraries. It contains two petitions requesting closer British government involvement in the transition of New South Wales from a convict colony to a well run society of respectable emigrants. It includes the names and, unusually for that period, the domiciles of all the petitioners, together with supporting arguments and detailed statistical documentation about the population, economy, laws and governance of the colony. The publication was supervised by the wealthy Australian-born landowner James Macarthur (1798-1867), who was becoming increasingly influential in the political and economic development of New South Wales. He aimed to secure 'the best interests of the Colony, strengthen the ties to the Parent State and render it in every way worthy of its British origin', by elevating 'the moral character of its society'.

Henry Demarest Lloyd (1847 1903), writer and social reformer, rose to prominence as one of America's first muckraker journalists. Born in New York City, Lloyd started his journalism career at the Chicago Tribune and went on to expose the abuse of power in American oil companies. He also pursued a career in politics. In 1899 he travelled to New Zealand and Australia, the 'political laboratories' of Great Britain, to investigate how they resolved the conflict between organised capital and organised labour, and how they promoted social welfare. This book, published in 1900, praises New Zealand's system of compulsory arbitration and describes many instances of successful dispute resolution, from clothing manufacture to newspaper typesetting. The book includes an introduction by William Pember Reeves (1857 1932), liberal newspaper editor and writer, who as New Zealand's minister of labour had brought in the Arbitration Act of 1894 and other important labour legislation."

Written in 1914 by Alice, Lady Lovat (1846-1938), a cousin, this biography of Sir Frederick Aloysius Weld (1823-91) is characterised by its subtitle, 'a pioneer of empire'. The young Weld emigrated to New Zealand with a cousin to establish sheep stations. Entering politics, he became Minister for Native Affairs and then Premier; his Native Rights Act of 1865 redressed many of the grievances which had led to the Maori Wars. In 1868 he was appointed Governor of Western Australia, where he brought in a degree of representative government and helped develop the telegraph and transport infrastructure. In 1874 he became Governor of Tasmania, and in 1880 was promoted to the Straits Settlements, where his period as a colonial administrator was notable for the increase of British influence among the princely rulers of the Malay States. Retiring in 1887 for health reasons, he died in England in 1891.

Little is known about Charles L. Money, who sailed in 1861 from Gravesend to New Zealand, where, as he recounts in this volume, he spent the next seven years, working as a gold prospector, a surveyor, a sheep hand, a baker's boy, and a log splitter. He also spent periods in the military, serving in McDonnell's campaign against the Maori in the second Taranaki war (1863-6), which was instrumental in establishing colonial control of the area, and participating in the notorious Pokaikai raid, an eyewitness account of which is included in the book. Money also, pragmatically, worked with, and occasionally for, the Maori. His narrative provides source material for social tensions in this formative period of New Zealand history, as well as giving a vivid picture of the hardships of emigrant life. It was published in 1871 by Samuel Mullen, the owner of the first literary library and bookshop in Australia.

The politician, landowner and journalist W. C. Wentworth (1790-1872), was an energetic and controversial character in the early history of modern Australia. Together with Gregory Blaxland and William Lawson, he was the first to cross Australia's Blue Mountains. A well-known public figure in the colony of New South Wales, he founded a newspaper called The Australian (in 1824) and campaigned, among other things, for a free press, trial by jury, rights for emancipated convicts, public education, and a representative government. He also became extremely wealthy. In this book, first published in 1819, Wentworth argues that the Australian colonies are a better choice than the United States of America for European emigrants. The book contains a vast amount of information about the colonies of New South Wales and Tasmania, together with Wentworth's suggestions for the improvement of their government, and remains an important source for historians.

Stephenson Percy Smith (1840-1922) arrived in New Zealand as a boy, and in early 1858 travelled six hundred miles exploring the volcanic interior of North Island, including Taupo, Lake Tarawera and the Tongariro-Ruapehu area, returning via Rangitikei and Wanganui. He also witnessed the unrest caused by the rapid European encroachment on Maori lands. After retiring in 1900 from his career as a government surveyor, Smith devoted himself to the study of the Maori and co-founded the Polynesian Society, in whose journal this study originally appeared between 1899 and 1901. Reissued here in its enlarged second edition of 1910, it deals with the inter-tribal 'Musket Wars' of the early nineteenth century, when different Maori communities competed for territory shortly before European settlement began in earnest. Although Smith's interpretations do not meet modern scholarly standards, his pioneering work still provides fascinating insights into nineteenth-century Maori traditions and their colonial reception.

Having decided to try his fortune in the new colonies of South Australia and New Zealand, budding geologist James Coutts Crawford (1817-89) landed at Sydney in 1838 and lost no time in buying and driving a herd of cattle from Braidwood, New South Wales, to Adelaide, a distance of more than three hundred miles of unfamiliar territory. This remarkable journey proved typical of the rest of his travels, during which he served variously as explorer, translator, and sheriff of Wellington. This book, which includes illustrations and maps, is his own record of his experiences, first published in 1880. Even at that time, New Zealand and Australia had changed radically since Crawford's first arrival in the earliest, minimal colonies; today, his account offers not only a fascinating insight into the difficulties and dangers of life there, but a useful source for students and researchers in history and geology.

In 1800-2 the naval officer James Grant (1772-1833) sailed to Australia on board the Lady Nelson, a surveying ship that was the first in England to be built on the sliding-keel principle. In this 1803 publication, Grant assesses the merits of the design and documents various teething problems experienced during the voyage from England to Australia. He describes his stay at Cape Town, and his favourable impression of the living standard of the deported convicts at Sydney, which he found better than that of poor people in England. Grant records his experiences on the coast of New South Wales, his encounters with the Aborigines there, and the presence of coal deposits on the Hunter River, and even reports that the cabra grub is 'no bad apology for a better meal'. He also describes his return journey via Cape Horn, during which he was becalmed in the South Atlantic.

English-born Thomas Morland Hocken (1836-1910), doctor, historian, and bibliographer, arrived in New Zealand in 1862 after abandoning his career as a ship's surgeon. After establishing a general practice in Dunedin, Hocken began to take a keen interest in the country's recent past. Published in 1898, this book was Hocken's first major work on New Zealand. The book focuses on the history of European settlement in the southern province of Otago in the years preceding the gold rush. Hocken begins with an account of the first pioneers' arrival in New Zealand, and the 'Wakefield Scheme' of assisted passage. The book describes the lives of the founding fathers of Dunedin, the migration of settlers to the area and the establishment of churches, and ends with the discovery of gold. Hocken wrote several other accounts of New Zealand history and was elected Fellow of the Linnean Society for his contribution to botany.

In October 1854 the Taranaki Herald reported the return to New Zealand of Charles Hursthouse, who 'for years past has been in England the untiring advocate of New Zealand emigration, and by his writings and lectures has materially contributed to the colonization of the settlement'. In this updated 1861 version of his 1857 book, Hursthouse promises 'a fair and honest picture of New Zealand as she is today' and expresses his belief that thousands of struggling British people from all walks of life would be 'saved' by emigrating. He describes New Zealand's history, climate, natural history, population, government, exports and markets, agricultural pursuits and trades, and includes a revealing chapter on war and 'native policy'. Hursthouse explains his own reasons for emigrating, and provides practical advice on official regulations, travel insurance, choice of ship, the best times to sail and how to keep occupied during the voyage.

Published in 1892, this two-volume biography chronicles the remarkable life and career of Sir George Grey (1812-98), the 11th premier of New Zealand. William Lee Rees (1836-1912), lawyer, politician and well-known supporter of Grey, co-wrote this work with his daughter Lily, and the books outline how Grey became arguably the most influential figure during the European settlement of New Zealand in the nineteenth century. The volumes proceed chronologically and are organised by the main events in Grey's life. Volume 1 begins with Grey's upbringing and early years, and describes his first voyage to Western Australia, his first government of New Zealand and his time as governor of Cape Colony. In addition to recounting the incidents, adventures and achievements of Grey's life, Rees also conveys Grey's personal principles and aspirations, giving the reader an insight into the character of this colonial governor and servant of the empire.

Published in 1892, this two-volume biography chronicles the remarkable life and career of Sir George Grey (1812-98), the 11th premier of New Zealand. William Lee Rees (1836-1912), lawyer, politician and well-known supporter of Grey, co-wrote this work with his daughter Lily, and the books outline how Grey became arguably the most influential figure during the European settlement of New Zealand in the nineteenth century. The volumes proceed chronologically and are organised by the main events in Grey's life. Volume 2 covers Grey's second governorships of Cape Colony and New Zealand, his engagement in English politics and his return to New Zealand in 1870. It concludes with an assessment of Grey's personal characteristics, successes and failures. In addition to recounting the incidents, adventures and achievements of Grey's life, Rees also conveys Grey's principles and aspirations, giving the reader an insight into the character of this servant of the empire.

Arthur S. Thomson (1816-60) was a Scottish military surgeon and medical scientist who was posted to New Zealand in the late 1840s. During his eleven years in the country, settlement increased and British sovereignty over the colony was extended. Thomson felt that previous historical accounts of New Zealand all demonstrated a certain political, colonial or religious bias, and decided to write his own comprehensive history of the islands, which was published in 1859. Volume 1 begins with a focus on the geography and climate of New Zealand. Thomson then describes the physical appearance of the New Zealanders, their way of life, their culture, their property laws and the origin of their (now abandoned) cannibalism. Next he describes the history of discovery and settlement by Europeans, who brought 'true civilisation' to the islands. Thomson gives especial credit to the Christian missionaries for having introduced progress and enlightenment.

Arthur S. Thomson (1816-60) was a Scottish military surgeon and medical scientist who was posted to New Zealand in the late 1840s. During his eleven years in the country, settlement increased and British sovereignty over the colony was extended. Thomson felt that previous historical accounts of New Zealand all demonstrated a certain political, colonial or religious bias, and decided to write his own comprehensive history of the islands, which was published in 1859. In Volume 2, Thomson continues the story of European discovery and settlement. He justifies the progress of British colonisation by arguing that it brought civilisation to the native people, fully supporting the introduction of English (property) law and the introduction of Christianity. Thomson advocates that the Maoris be taught English, as this is the only way to give them hope that they can 'rise above the hewers of wood and drawers of water'.

The first attempt by Europeans to settle in the area that eventually became the state of Victoria, Australia, was led by Colonel David Collins in 1803. Melbourne was founded in 1835, and after the discovery of gold in 1851 became the financial centre of Australia. This authoritative two-volume history of the state's first century, published in 1904 by the banker Henry Gyles Turner (1831-1920), is based on parliamentary records and information from leading political figures with whom the author was personally acquainted. Volume 1 traces Victoria's development from its early settlement to its establishment as an independent colony and the discovery of gold. It explores the region's progress and the challenges it faced as the gold rush led to overpopulation, high living costs, and mining disputes. The book gives first-hand insights into a time of rapid political, social and economic change.

The first attempt by Europeans to settle in the area that eventually became the state of Victoria, Australia, was led by Colonel David Collins in 1803. Melbourne was founded in 1835, and after the discovery of gold in 1851 became the financial centre of Australia. This authoritative two-volume history of the state's first century, published in 1904 by the banker Henry Gyles Turner (1831-1920), is based on parliamentary records and information from leading political figures with whom the author was personally acquainted. Volume 2 continues Turner's discussion of the gold rush, and covers the management of the goldfields, the imprisonment of unlicensed miners, and the miners' revolts against taxes. The book sets events in the context of the region's changing political landscape, and documents the struggle to establish an efficient government. It ends with a thorough account of Victoria's integration into the Commonwealth of Australia.

J. S. Polack (1807-82) lived in New Zealand during 1831-7 and 1842-50. An enterprising businessman and land speculator, he traded in timber and flax, and in 1835 set up the first brewery in the country. He also learned the Maori language, and warned against the destructive effects on Maori society of unorganized European settlement, while arguing for the benefits of systematic colonization. This two-volume work, published in 1838, was the first of two successful books by Polack about his experiences in New Zealand and is still regarded as an important and impartial source about the period immediately preceding the Treaty of Waitangi. Volume 1 outlines the discovery of the islands, their climate, geology, topography and fauna. It contains vivid descriptions of the Maori and their customs (including an account of an energetic haka) and details about family life, social status, food, tapu prohibitions, dress, and tattooing.

J. S. Polack (1807-82) lived in New Zealand during 1831-7 and 1842-50. An enterprising businessman and land speculator, he traded in timber and flax, and in 1835 set up the first brewery in the country. He also learned the Maori language, and warned against the destructive effects on Maori society of unorganized European settlement, while arguing for the benefits of systematic colonization. This two-volume work, published in 1838, was the first of two successful books by Polack about his experiences in New Zealand and is still regarded as an important and impartial source about the period immediately preceding the Treaty of Waitangi. Volume 2 focuses on Maori material culture and craftsmanship, traditional beliefs and rituals, and warfare (including lurid reports of cannibalism), as well as the early interactions of Maori and Europeans through trade, missions and whaling.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862) was a colonial advocate and political theorist, who was influential in the early colonisation of New Zealand and South Australia. Wakefield read widely on contemporary economics and social questions, and his theory of colonisation helped shape the British Empire. He formed the New Zealand Association in 1837 to create a new colony in that country, finally emigrating himself in 1852. His son, the editor of this volume of letters, was appointed secretary of the first settler expedition to New Zealand in 1839, and was elected political representative for Canterbury in 1854. The letters in the volume, published in 1868, which span the period 1847-50, trace the history of the town of Canterbury from Wakefield senior's suggestion of church-led settlement in the 1840s to its foundation in 1850-1. A planned second volume was never published.