The 53rd Australian Antiquarian Book Fair
The Melbourne Rare Book Fair 2024 will be held Thursday 25 July to Saturday 27 July 2024
presented by ANZAAB with the support of the University of Melbourne.
About the Fair, History of the Fair
Featured Highlights
Jeffrey Smart [Signed]
$375
First Edition [The Beagle Press, Sydney, 2005]; 256 pages; red cloth, gold titling to front board & spine, slight lean, faint stain at base of front board, a very good copy; in like illustrated dustjacket, scratches on rear, a little bumped at extremities, v. slight sunfading.
Perhaps the most comprehensive volume on the life & art of one of Australia's finest artists.
With signed inscriptions from Lou Klepac, Barry Pearce & Jeffrey Smart [for my darling Pammers…] to Pam Cleland.
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PARKINSON, Sydney. A Journal of the Voyage to the South Seas. London: Printed for Charles Dilly and James Phillips, 1784.
The scarce and beautifully hand-coloured issue of the expanded second edition, Du Rietz noting that it was "apparently issued in less than 400 copies". The first of 1773 was not issued in a coloured version, nor did it include the double-hemisphere map showing the routes of Cook's three voyages. We trace only seven copies of this coloured issue in commerce in the last 40 years.
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The Du Poissey Anecdotes
$885
Hugh McCrae. The Du Poissey Anecdotes
An inscribed presentation copy to his father with pages of manuscript
The first printed map of Alaska and the first map to focus on “Australia”
$35000
Two seminal maps of the Pacific: the earliest map focused on Alaska, the Northwest and upper California, and “the first printed map of Australia” (Tooley).
In the map of North America the west coast is reasonably well delineated, and de Jode has chosen to include the mythical Strait of Anian separating America from Asia. The existence of a body of water between the two continents had been suggested but not proved when the map was made. Despite the channel between the continents, the figures populating America are outside tents and domed buildings which are distinctly Asian in appearance.