Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane: George Robertson, 1880

8vo, pp. 372, folding map frontispiece. Original brown boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Just a little bumping to spine ends, bookplate to front pastedown. An all but fine and unopened copy.

First edition.

A landmark title in the development of anthropology, in which Lorimer and Howitt combined their own innovative methods with those of their mentor, the American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, to whom the book is dedicated. One of the book's first British readers was Charles Darwin, who thought it so important that he promptly sent copies to the British anthropologists John Lubbock and John McLennan -- whose attitudes towards 'primitive' peoples made them two of the book's chief targets.

A near fine, bright and unopened copy.