ALMQVIST, Carl Jonas Love.
Parjumouf. Saga ifran Nya Holland.
Stockholm, A. Gadelius, 1817.
Duodecimo, 98 pp.; in good condition in a neat modern morocco binding.
An interesting early Swedish fiction set in colonial Australia, although an archaic name is used for the continent. This scarce fiction with an Australian setting has never been translated into English.
"Almqvist's earliest books, published in 1814-18, are of extreme rarity. One of these was Parjumouf… apparently the first Swedish novel or short story with an Australian setting" (Du Rietz). A meeting at a wine merchant's in Bordeaux is told of the adventures of the young woman Parjumouf in New Holland, also referred to by Almqvist as Ulimaroa, a name that he had adapted from the Swedish geographer Daniel Djurberg, who had picked it up from the official narrative of Cook's first voyage. Both Cook and Joseph Banks had noted the use of the name in New Zealand (see Du Rietz, Daniel Djurbergs namm på Australien, Ymer, 1961).
Ferguson records only the National Library copy, but the Mitchell Library is known to have acquired a copy in the 1960s.
Du Rietz, Swansea, 92; Ferguson, 691a.
