Edwards's Australasian Catalogue:

An outstanding catalogue of Australasian material

First edition of bookseller, publisher, bibliographer and book collector's 3,000 item priced catalogue of Australiana. In 1865, the English-born Petherick (1847-1917) started collecting titles for a catalogue or bibliography of Australia but temporarily abandoned the project in 1870 to focus on reorganising the bookselling firm that he worked for, George Robertson. With this successfully accomplished, "Petherick set up business in 1887 as the Colonial Booksellers' Agency at 33 Paternoster Row with a capital of 800, the backing of a number of publishers and the assistance of Australian banks as distributing branches in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. By 1894 he had immensely influenced the content of reading on Australia... In 1894 Petherick went bankrupt with debts of about 50,000. His book stocks were sold to E. W. Cole of Melbourne and his Collection of Favourite and Approved Authors was taken over by George Bell & Sons. With his wife's help he met his difficulties and she and a number of friends succeeded in saving his own collection of Australiana. Broken by his business failure, he became a cataloguer with Francis Edwards & Co. and in 1895-1908 produced a series of outstanding catalogues of Australasian material. As means permitted he continued his collecting and devoted much effort to complete his 'Bibliography of Australia and Polynesia'; he prepared a printed prospectus of it in 1898 but was unable to arrange publication" (Burmester). This edition includes the aforementioned printed prospectus on page 220.