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Memoirs Historical and Scientific of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Banks, Bart.
Memoirs Historical and Scientific of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Banks, Bart.

Memoirs Historical and Scientific of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Banks, Bart.

Author
Printer
Lithographer (1827 - 1867)
Date1855
Object number00051348
NameBook
MediumPaper, ink, card
DimensionsOverall: 176 x 109 x 11 mm
ClassificationsBooks and journals
Credit LineANMM Collection
DescriptionLike William Bligh, the Governor of New South Wales who he supported so prominently during the Rum Rebellion, horticulturalist George Suttor owed his advancement to the patronage of Sir Joseph Banks. In this memoir produced many years after Banks's death, Suttor reflects on the many achievements of the man who played a pivotal role in the European settlement of Australia.HistoryThis memoir is the work of George Suttor (1774-1859) who met Sir Joseph Banks in the late 1790s while working as a gardener and botanist on the estate of Lord Cadogan. Banks sponsored him for settlement in New South Wales, and Suttor left England in 1800 aboard HMS PORPOISE with a consignment of European plants, trees and vegetables for the nascent colony. Suttor arrived in November that year and was granted land at Baulkham Hills near Parramatta where he successfully established a nursery, sending fresh fruit to Sydney within a few years of establishment. Suttor backed Bligh during the Rum Rebellion and suffered as a result, but was subsequently rewarded with land and responsibility by Bligh's successor, Governor Macquarie. While visiting England in 1839 Suttor was elected a member of the Linnaean Society. He returned to his Bathurst property in New South Wales in 1845 and died in 1859. He is buried at nearby Kelso. The memoir was printed by Edmund Mason, a printer, publisher and bookseller active between 1843 and 1869. Mason printed the majority of his material from his workshop in George Street Parramatta. The frontispiece portrait of Banks was lithographed by Edmund Thomas (1827-1867), an English artist and lithographer who worked in Sydney from 1852. It is based on the portrait of Banks by Thomas Phillips commissioned by the Royal Society and shows Banks wearing the decorations of the Order of the Bath which he received in 1795. SignificanceThis work is significant as a memoir of one of the great figures of British and Australian colonial history, written by a person who knew him closely. It throws light on the lives of both Sir Joseph Banks and George Suttor and the world they inhabited.