A History of Australia, Volume III: The Beginning of An Australian Civilization, 1824-1851

First softcover edition. xvi, 492pp, plus occasional monochrome plate illustrations. In printed light card covers. 8vo. Covers a little brushed and faded, gently rubbed at edges in places, reader's creasing on spine. Internally neat, clean, bright and tight barring some pencil annotations of first leaf. The third volume in Manning Clark's distinguished history of Australia takes the story to the moment of the discovery of gold and the separation of Victoria from New South Wales. A story of destruction as well as construction: The destruction of the aborigines and the construction of an essentially English bourgeois society and the taming of an alien and seemingly sterile land along the coastal country.