Full details of each lot are displayed, except the lot number, estimate and price. You must be a subscriber to view lot numbers, estimates and prices.
Gerstaëcker, Friedrich Wilhelm Christian [1816-1872] The Two…
Sale Title:
Auction House:
Auction Location:
Melbourne
Date:
15-Jul-2018
Lot No.
***
Description:
Gerstaëcker, Friedrich Wilhelm Christian [1816-1872] The Two Convicts (in German, Die beiden Sträflinge, 1856) [London; G. Routledge & Co., 1857] 1st edition in English; 393pp in original half-calf binding with marbled boards; title in gilt to spine. With early ownership inscription. Gerstaecker, writer and traveller, was born in Hamburg. In 1837, aged 21, he migrated to America where he led 'a wild and adventurous life'. On his return to Germany in 1843 he established himself as a writer of travel books. Factual accounts of his own experiences and guides for intending migrants were followed by novels on American life that made him famous in Germany. In 1849 he went from South America to the goldfields of California and thence to Australia by way of the South Sea islands. He arrived in Sydney in March 1851, took a coach to Albury and attempted to paddle down the Murray River in a self-made canoe. When it was wrecked he tramped 700 miles (1127 km) to Adelaide, 'the wildest and most dangerous march' of his life. He visited the German settlements in South Australia but in August the first news of the gold strike hurried him back to Sydney and the Bathurst diggings. His most popular Australian novels are Die beiden Sträflinge (1856; translated as The Two Convicts, 1857), an adventurous story of a noble bushranger which was serialized in the Examiner and Melbourne Weekly News from October 1859 to March 1860, and Im Busch (1864), set in gold diggings near Sydney. Both deal with problems that he found especially interesting in the Australian scene: the complex relation between convicts, bushrangers, natives and free settlers, the fate of German migrants in Australia and the exciting life of the goldfields.
Estimate:
***
Price:
***
Category:
Unclassified