Books in the Cambridge Library Collection - History of Oceania series

John Lort Stokes (1812-85) was an officer on H.M.S. Beagle - the ship that had carried naturalist Charles Darwin. The ship's next commission was a survey of Australia, which lasted nearly six years, and Stokes published a two-volume account of it in 1846. Volume 1 covers exploration in north-west Australia.

Published in 1833, this two-volume account by Charles Sturt (1795-1869) documents the difficulties of exploring unmapped territory in the harsh climate of the Australian summer. Volume 1 focuses on Sturt's expedition along the Macquarie and Darling rivers, and his encounters with the Aboriginal population of that region.

Written by a convicted pickpocket and punctuated by colourful plates and vignettes, George Barrington's 1802 account of murder, theft, punishment and retribution in New South Wales continues to entertain and inform anyone with an interest in colonial, maritime or criminal history.

Timothy Coghlan was the statistician for the government of New South Wales from 1886, and is regarded as Australia's first 'mandarin'. This monumental book, first published in 1918, was the culmination of his life's work, and is a personal history of Australia embracing materials, trade, population growth and land.

Coghlan was the statistician for New South Wales from 1886, and is regarded as Australia's first 'Mandarin'. First published in 1903, and benefiting greatly from the author's extensive hard statistical data, this was one of the first comprehensive histories of Australia, charting her development from penal colony to urbanised democracy.

First published in 1893, this work provided the English public with a detailed account of Australian life and culture. Adams divides his study in two parts, the first describing life in the coastal settlements, the second focusing on the eastern interior of the country.

English-born minister John West (1809-1873) moved to Tasmania in 1838 and became a critic of convict transportation. A supporter commissioned him to write this history, and the two volumes were published in 1852. Volume 1 describes the European settlement of the island.

George William Rusden (1819-1903) was born in England but spent most of his life in Australia. When he retired from the civil service he wrote this comprehensive - and controversial - work, published in 1883 in three volumes, covering the period from the initial settlement to the late nineteenth century.

An outspoken advocate of Australian republicanism, John Dunmore Lang (1799-1878) wrote this 1834 two-volume work to promote immigration and investment in his adopted country. Compiled during a voyage from New South Wales to Britain, the book illustrates the past history and present state of the New South Wales colony.

In 1865, following a two-year visit to Australia, the prolific English writer William Howitt published this two-volume account of the European exploration of Australia and New Zealand. Volume 1 includes the voyages of Abel Tasman and Captain Cook, and other explorers up to the 1840s including Fitzroy and Darwin.

James Francis Hogan (1855-1924) wrote several histories of Irish colonisation in Australia. This 1891 publication presents the colourful autobiography of Jorgen Jorgenson (1780-1841), a Danish adventurer , briefly 'King of Iceland', who insinuated himself into influential social networks in Britain but was eventually transported to Tasmania as a convict.

Published shortly after his death in 1862, Flanagan's chronicle demonstrates the author's enthusiastic, but politically impartial, approach to Australian history. Opening with Cook's voyage of 1770, Volume 1 covers the first sixty-eight years of European immigration, and the political, criminal and military skirmishes that shaped the new British colony.

A sympathetic anthropological account of the Tasmanian aborigines by non-conformist mystic James Bonwick (1817-1906), whose further work on the subject was cited by Darwin, provides important source material about this nearly extinct people and gives insights into the morally difficult subjects of nineteenth-century anthropology and colonial settlement.