Depicting New South Wales, Victoria, the east coast of Australia and New Zealand, it was commissioned by the botanist Sir Joseph Banks in 1772 to celebrate the success of Captain James Cook’s first great voyage of discovery to the Pacific.
Estimated at £80,000-120,000, it is one of just three copies of the map which are known to have survived.
While one is kept in the British Library and another is held in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, this is the only example left in private hands.
Banks had planned to join Cook’s second voyage scheduled for 1772, but following a dispute with the Admiralty, he
withdrew from the next venture and destroyed all uncirculated copies of the map.
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