History of West Australia: A Narrative Of Her Past Together With Biographies Of Her Leading Men is a folio size book of 250 mm × 320 mm (9.8 in × 12.6 in), compiled by W. B. Kimberly over a period of 18 months, and published in 1897.
Due to its age, all of the material in the book is in the public domain and may be freely reproduced.
Kimberly, an American, came to Australia from Chicago in the mid-1880s and edited commemorative histories of the gold mining towns of Ballarat and Bendigo, both published by F. W. Niven & Co. in Melbourne. In late 1895 he approached Sir John Forrest with a proposal for a similar project if the Government of Western Australia would make a £2000 subsidy grant. Forrest countered with an offer that the government would guarantee the purchase of 100 of the completed books. Kimberly accepted and with assistant and Melbourne journalist J. J. Pascoe completed the 340,000 word project in 18 months.[1]: 679
The book consists of two parts: The first (and larger) section up to page 348 deals with the history of Western Australia from the earliest European hypotheses of the country's existence in the 14th century through to May of the year of publication (1897), including extensive detail on European exploration across the state from 1829.[a][2] Two appendices which are essentially essays, follow and deal mainly with gold and the gold mining industry which was the dominant social and economic factor in the state at the time of publication.[3]
The second section is a volume of 163 biographies of notable Western Australians. Page numbering restarts from 1 through to 236 and typically include several pages of text as well as a large portrait photo for each entry.
