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  A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean
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  Voyage to Terra Australis
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  The Mammals of Australia
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  Voyage de Découvertes

Terra Australis

By the 18th century the broad outlines of the Earth’s continents had been given shape by European mapmakers.

The next phase of European navigation coincided with the great age of scientific exploration, when natural historians, botanists and artists were charged with the mission of taking a closer look.

The three great voyages by Captain James Cook to the Pacific between 1767 and 1780 charted its many islands. The compilation A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean recorded Cook's discoveries, while his botanists Joseph Banks, Daniel Solander and Johann Forster added enormously to our knowledge of plants in the southern hemisphere.

First Fleet surgeon John White used convict artists to record the fauna and flora of the new English colony at Port Jackson. Early books on the new land, like The Mammals of Australia, reflect the struggle of artists to come to terms with a new and unfamiliar landscape. They are also significant as records of early contact with indigenous cultures.

During the first half of the 19th century, France was responsible for an ambitious series of scientific expeditions to Australia and the Pacific. The French rivalry with England affected cartographers like Matthew Flinders, who was prevented by the French from publishing his Voyage to Terra Australis until their maps were printed first.

Yet the magnificent state-sponsored publications issued in the wake of voyages by Louis de Freycinet, Louis Isidore Duperry, and Jules Dumont D’Urville, including Nicolas Baudin's Voyages de Découvertes, are amongst the finest publications ever issued on Australia and the Pacific.