Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia Vol. 1 is a work by George Grey. Grey was a British soldier, voyager, colonial administrator and author. Excerpt: "This morning directly after breakfast I read prayers to the men, and then commenced my preparations for the excursion on which I intended to start in the evening. Whilst I was occupied in arranging my papers Mr. Lushington observed two natives sitting on the rocks on the top of the cliffs which overlooked the valley, and gazing down intently on us. The instant that he made friendly signs to them they rose from their seats and began to retreat. Some of the party then called to them and one of the natives answered; but they still moved rapidly away. I would not allow them to be followed for fear of increasing their alarm, and in the hope that they would return, but was disappointed. It must have awakened strange feelings in the breast of these two savages, who could never before have seen civilized man, thus to have sat spectators and overlookers of the every action of such incomprehensible beings as we must have appeared; and the relation to their comrades of the wonders they had witnessed could not have been to them a whit less marvellous than the tales of the grey-headed Irish peasant, when he recounts the freaks of the fairies, "whose midnight revels by the forest side or fountain" he has watched intently from some shrub-clad hill."

The following pages contain the results of the author's travels and residence in the western parts of Australia, between the years 1837 and 1840, during which period he traversed extensive regions unknown to the European traveler, and probably never before trodden by the foot of civilized man. It is not alone with gratification of enlightened curiosity that the countries now first brought to notice are likely to be objects of interest. A knowledge of the districts lying between Swan River and Shark Bay cannot but be of importance to future colonists, whilst the intertropical provinces of the north-west coasts, distinguished as they are by important peculiarities both of character and position, are equally calculated to draw the attention of the literary and enterprising enquirer.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1841.

The body is increasingly understood as being at the centre of colonial and post-colonial relationships and textual productions. Creating and circulating images of the undisciplined body of the 'other' was and is a critical aspect of colonialism. Likewise, resistance to colonial practices was also frequently corporeal, with indigenous peoples appropriating, parodying, and subverting those European practices which were used to signify the 'civilized' status of the colonizing body. The Body in the Library reads representations of the corporeal in texts of empire; case studies include: • gendered representations of corporeality • medical régimes • ethnography and photography in the Pacific • cultural transvestism in theatre • disease and colonial knowledge generation • 'freak shows' and colonial exhibits • cinematic representations of bodies • geography and the metaphorization of land as a penetrable body • marketing the body • organ transplants and the limits of the post-colonial paradigm In viewing colonialism and resistance as a bodily phenomenon, The Body in the Library enables new perspectives on the process of colonization and resistance. It is an important resource for teachers and students of colonial and post-colonial literatures.