John H. Margetts

Picturesque New Britain: Selected Photographs of a Delightful Country and its Very Interesting People

[Rabual?]: [John H. Margetts], No date.
12cm x 20cm. Printed title page, 99 (of 100) original albumen photographs, each captioned in the images, with tissue guards. Original Quarter cloth, turquoise papered boards, gilt lettering.

An extremely rare and completely unrecorded photo album of New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Only a variant with 50 photographs and a variant title (Picturesque New Britain. Snaps from a Missionary’s Camera) is known to exist in a private collection in Australia (see the website of the Papua New Guinea Association of Australia). Not in Trove, not in OCLC. Margetts was an Australian Methodist missionary. The photographs show views, sites and buildings, including Rabaul Harbour, HMAS Melbourne at anchor, Namanula Hospital, Government House, Botanical Gardens, road scenes, views and many coastal scenes with villagers, fishing villages and their inhabitants with their canoes, boats and fishing traps, mothers carrying babies in nets, members of the Duk Duk secret society in costume, coils of native shell money, fire dancers in costume at Bainig, domestic activities, Kulau dancers at South New Ireland, Kokomo and Kepog dancers,  Native girls surfing, fish traps, house building, making and mending nets, strangling pigs.

Cloth heavily insect damaged. Minor staining and rubbing to boards. Title page almost detached with pencil scribble to front endpaper. 1 photograph removed. Previous owner's inscription in pencil to rear endpaper, "C. Perkins, Rabaul, New Britain, 1920. Binding in Fair Condition. Photographs in Very Good Condition.