Book launch : Paul Gibbard, ‘The French Collector’

Venue: Alliance Française de Perth, 75 Broadway, Nedlands 6009

Come along to the official launch of The French Collector: Journal and Letters of Théodore Leschenault, Botanist of the Baudin Expedition (UWA Publishing) with translator Paul Gibbard.

The book launch will feature a talk by Paul Gibbard and Kirk Essary.

The French botanist Théodore Leschenault (1773–1826) travelled with Nicolas Baudin’s voyage of discovery to Australia in the years 1800 to 1803: his journal and letters vividly record his impressions of life aboard ship, the plants and animals he found ashore, and meetings with Indigenous peoples.
Long thought lost, Leschenault’s original manuscript journal was rediscovered only in 2016. The French Collector offers the first complete English translation of this journal along with an introduction and explanatory notes.

Dr Paul Gibbard is senior lecturer in French Studies at the University of Western Australia and his research lies in French literature from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and the French exploration of Australia. His translation of Emile Zola’s The Dream (Oxford World’s Classics) was shortlisted for the Australian Academy of the Humanities translation medal.  

Copies of the book will be available for purchase.