Rare Books

5:00PM 3 Abbey Street, Newton, Auckland

Art+Object is delighted to offer a major collection of rare books from the library of John Pritchard in our September auction.

John fostered an interest in New Zealand history and book collecting from an early age and continued throughout his long career in law in Southland and Otago. In the mid-1980s he acquired a significant New Zealand book collection from his friend Nigel Eccles, the great grandson of Johnnie Jones the Otago Whaling Pioneer of the 1830s, and son of Alfred Eccles, early colonist, historian and author.

This collection features important southern histories by Robert McNab, Herries Beattie and F. Hall-Jones, amongst others. Many are signed copies.

Also included are a first edition copy of Alfred Duncan’s ‘The Wakatipians’ and a copy of ‘Reminiscences’ by M.C. Orbell.

The New Zealand & Maori histories section features works by E. Best, Polack, Dieffenbach, Cruise, Nicholas, Earle, Wakefield, and others. Of particular interest is ‘The History of Tattooing and its Significance’ by W.D. Hambly, London 1925.

John’s other interest has been military history, and the sale includes his complete sets of New Zealand WWI and WWII official histories as well as numerous other military items related to the New Zealand Wars and the Boer War.

Joseph Crosby Smith [1853-1930]

Born in Britain in 1853, at the age of 27 he emigrated to NZ on the ‘Calypso’, arriving in Port Chalmers in 1876, living in Dunedin, working as a bookkeeper for 25 years at Shacklocks, teaching shorthand at the Caledonian Society & becoming a borough council member. In 1901 he moved to Invercargill, becoming a partner in the firm Smith & Laing, ironmongers. It is here that family history records him building his own brass microscope from parts imported from England. His long-standing and passionate interest in natural history had grown. An active member of the Otago Field Naturalist’s Club he was studying seaweed and corresponding with R.M. Laing, during this period publishing several original, important botanical papers. In 1907 he was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and in the same year participated in the Canterbury expedition to the Subantarctic Islands, writing a valuable account of the expedition.

Moving back to Dunedin in 1925 he was elected President of the Otago Institute in 1926.
He actively corresponded with noted botanists Leonard Cockayne, Donald Petrie, F.G. Gibbs R.M. Laing and others joining them on expeditions to localities in Southland, Otago & Canterbury, gathering several previously unknown plant species, some of these named in his honor.