GIGLIOLI (E.H.)
I Tasmaniani cenni storici ed etnologici di un popolo estinto
A fine copy. As a result of contact with indigenous races, it was “keenly appreciated that accurate pictorial records were needed before further contact disrupted and debased native culture and individuality … [Commissioned by the Royal Society of Tasmania,] Charles Woolley’s portraits of the last of the Tasmanian Aborigines taken in 1866 are early and rare examples of such awareness in nineteenth-century Australia” (Holden).
This work forms part of the series Biblioteca di viaggi. The first part recounts the first voyages to Tasmania of Tasman, Cook and Bligh; European settlers; and includes a discussion of the captivity and extinction of the indigenous population. The second part is a detailed ethnographic study of the Aborigines.
A zoologist by profession, Gilgioli had a keen interest in anthropology. He spent three years travelling on a naturalists’ expedition in the 1860s and from 1883 assembled a large collection of ethnographic material. Ferguson, 9906; Long, C; Tasmanian Photographers (1995); Holden, R; Photography in Colonial Australia (1988), p47.
