Highlights
Here is a small selection of the highlights offered in 2026 by our exhibitors for you to browse and whet your appetite. These highlights are only a small offering of what will be available at the fair.
Our exhibitors will be uploading more highlights regularly up to the opening of the fair.
If you are interested in a highlight, contact the respective exhibitor directly. Prices are in Australian dollars inclusive of GST.
"CASUARIUS AUSTRALIS"; Original watercolour by William Hogg, 1856.
$3800
"CASUARIUS AUSTRALIS"
Artist: WILLIAM HOGG
Technique: WATERCOLOUR
Original watercolour by British artist William Hogg depicting two Australian cassowaries, female (above) and male (below).
Very fine hand.
NOTE:
Original watercolour on thick wove paper.
Signed: "W. Hogg. 1856" lower left.
SIZE: 345mm(H) x 260mm(L)
CONDITION:
In excellent condition.
A tear (20mm) lower margin near letter "A" of "Australis" in the title.
Mounted on an old passpartout.
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Theatrum Orbis Terrarum / Parergon / Nomenclator Ptolemaicus.
$395000
The final edition (1601) of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum printed at the Plantin press, complete with the Parergon and the Nomenclator, in rich contemporary hand colour.
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VISHNIAC, Roman: Peddlers Transformed into Beggars by the Boycott, 1938
$2000
A selenium-toned gelatin silver photograph (270 × 267 mm). Plate 4 from number 14 of 50 copies of 'The Vanished World' portfolio (New York, Witkin-Berley, 1977/ 1938). The peddlers in question were the victim of antisemitic boycotts organised by the Polish nationalist movement in the interwar period.
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Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia, performed between the years 1818 and 1822
$10500
Association copy of Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia by Phillip Parker King.
Both volumes bear identical ink presentation inscriptions to the front free endpaper: “John Lethbridge King / from his affect[ionate] father / Phillip Gidley King / 1892.”
John Lethbridge King was the son of Philip Gidley King (1817–1904), grandson of Phillip Parker King (1791–1856), and great-grandson of Captain Philip Gidley King (1758–1808), Governor of New South Wales.
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!["HAWAII"; “ÎLES SANDWICH: MAISONS DE KRAÏMOKOU, Premier Ministre du Roi; FABRICATION DES ÉTOFFES” [Sandwich Islands: Houses of Kalanimoku, Prime Minister of the King; Fabric Making]. "Voyage autour du monde" under the command of Louis de Freycinet](https://rarebookfair.com/assets/catalogues/sartoniprints@yahoo.it/PALLIERE-Saladero.jpg)
"HAWAII"; “ÎLES SANDWICH: MAISONS DE KRAÏMOKOU, Premier Ministre du Roi; FABRICATION DES ÉTOFFES” [Sandwich Islands: Houses of Kalanimoku, Prime Minister of the King; Fabric Making]. "Voyage autour du monde" under the command of Louis de Freycinet
$950
“ÎLES SANDWICH: MAISONS DE KRAÏMOKOU, Premier Ministre du Roi; FABRICATION DES ÉTOFFES” [Sandwich Islands: Houses of Kalanimoku, Prime Minister of the King; Fabric Making] Hawaii Islands. 1825. ALPHONSE PELLION (1796-1868) [drawn by]
STIPPLE ENGRAVING [contemporary hand-colour]
Early and interesting depiction of Hawaii Island. The esteemed Prime Minister Kalanimoku standing in the doorway of one of his houses in the company of his wife Likelike. In the foreground is an Olo board, the largest of the Hawaiian wood surfboards...
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George R.R. Martin. A Game of Thrones. Book One of a Song of Ice and Fire
$2500
First Edition 1996. London: Voyager - Harper Collins.
8vo. original red boards gilt in dustwrapper;
pp. [viii (last blank)], 696 (last blank), with two maps.
A very good copy of the first book in the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' sequence. Uncommon and highly sought after.
The Catcher in the Rye
$1835
Salinger, J.D 1951 (First English Edition). Hamish Hamilton, London, England
Hardcover in mid blue cloth with silver title on a firm spine. upper edges with early browning but otherwise in excellent shape plus the attractive blue/green unclipped English dust wrapper designed by Fritz Wegner) has moderate chipping to top and bottom edges and all corners plus a 2cm tear to top edge now verso repaired with heritage tape, plus is protected by removable clear archival covering.
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ARISTOPHANES Lysistrata; Done into English verse by Jack Lindsay; with illustrations and decorations by Norman Lindsay
$2500
Sydney: Fanfrolico, 1925. First Edition. Deluxe edition. No. 50/64. This is one of the early books from the Fanfrolico Press produced in Sydney before their move to London.
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STEIN, Gertrude. How To Write.
$700
Paris: Plain Edition [1931]. First edition. 395 pp. Some light foxing to fore-edge, else very near fine in paper-covered boards with printed spine label. No dust jacket, as issued. Wilson A17.
From Louis XVIII's library: Racine (Jean) OEUVRES COMPLETES DE J. RACINE
$12000
avec les notes de tous les commentateurs. Edition publiee par L. Aime-Martin. Six volumes. Volume I stamp-signed at foot 'Simier R du Roi' [Binder to the King], the boards with decorative gilt and blind borders, arms of Louis XVIII in gilt at centre. Lefevre, Paris, 1820. First edition thus. *The works of one of the greatest French literary figures of his age. Louis XVIII (1755-1824) was the king of France by title from 1795 and in fact from 1814 to 1824, except for the 'Hundred Days' after Napoleon returned to power following his escape from Elba. Louis XVIII owned two large book collections.
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Le Tableau de la Croix Represente
$4500
First issue of this wholly engraved devotional work in a contemporary French pointille binding.
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The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay
$8500
The second edition, and the preferred, of The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, being one of the most important and detailed accounts of Australian colonial settlement.
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Doctor Zhivago
$550
1958 (First Edition English Translation). Collins and Harvill Press, London, England
Hardcover in publisher's red cloth with gold title on a firm rounded spine with virtually no shelf-wear on the book itself plus a purple and yellow non price-clipped dust wrapper showing the expected scuffing and chipping on all corners and edges, but now protected by removable clear archival covering.
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Kowalewski, Joseph Etienne - Dictionnaire Mongol-Russe-Français Dédié à Sa Majesté L'Empereur de Toutes les Russies.
$3950
A landmark work - the first large-scale scholarly dictionary of Mongolian published for the European market and a milestone in historical linguistics and academic publishing. Published in three volumes over six years, it drew on classical Mongolian and religious and archaic texts (reflecting the author's own interests in Mongolia and in Buddhism); the trilingual dictionary also addressed the challenge of transliterating Mongolian script. These three volumes were reprinted and bound as one in 1941 by the influential White Russian bookseller and publisher Ivan Serebrennikoff in Tianjin.
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To Kill A Mocking Bird
$2300
1960 (First UK Edition). Heinemann, London, England
A famous story written as a first novel by Harper Lee through the eyes of children and made all the more famous by the brilliant 1962 film with Gregory Peck. Both the US and English additions are notoriously scarce, particularly now with the recent death of Ms.Lee.
All three edges are slightly browned though the text is in an excellent shape with the only fault being a prior owner signature on the front free endpaper, with no foxing at all either.
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Rare early Thai astronomical printing and description of the 1850 solar eclipse. - J.H. Chandler Union Press Bangkok -1850 Almanac
$12500
This Almanac was printed in Bangkok in 1850 by John Hassett Chandler. The first book was not printed in Thailand until 1837, so this is an early imprint. The text for this 1850 almanac is particularly interesting as it includes a very early description of Western astronomy aimed at a Thai audience. The description of the mechanism of an eclipse, and the map of route of the upcoming solar eclipse demonstrated Western understanding of the universe. We know that King Mongkut (1804-1868) had a deep interest in Western science, and famously accurately predicted the 1868 solar eclipse in Thailand.
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Raleigh's search for Eldorado - "Brevis & admiranda descriptio regni Guianae"
$20000
"Brevis & admiranda descriptio regni Guianae, auri abundantissimi, in America, seu novo orbe, sublinea aequinoctilia siti: Quod nuper admodum, annis nimirum 1564 [i.e. 1594]. 1595 & 1596."
-Nuremberg, Levinus Hulsius, 1599. Complete with map and 6 plates.
This famous account was published soon after Raleigh's failed attempt to discover Eldorado. The account is punctuated by accounts of mythical peoples including Ewaipanomas (people with faces on their bodies) and Women Amazonian warriors.
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Catalogue of shield reptiles in the collection of the British Museum, part one: Testudinata (tortoises)
$4000
Gray, John Edward. London: British Museum, 1855. Quarto, 82 pp., 42 uncoloured lithographs. Contemporary half morocco and marbled boards, some blemishes, top edge gilt, a presentation copy dated 1885 from P. L. Sclater to the Rev. G. R. Fisk, small neat library stamps on title page and plates, a fine copy.
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NAXI. Manuscripts written in the Dongba pictographic script.
$28500
Examples of the only pictographic script still in active use, though now critically endangered. Dongba belongs to the Naxi people of north-western Yunnan, China, but knowledge of the pictograms and their complex meaning is confined to the community’s shamans. The language was entered into the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2003. Six manuscripts (each c. 95 x 300 mm), totalling 54 leaves sewn between sets of contemporary covers.
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Goes’ definitive Humanist Chronicle validates the Portuguese Empire in India
$190000
Goes, Damião de. Chronica do felicissimo rei dom Emanuel, 1566-67. Lisbon. F. Correa.
First edition, one of the rarest and most important Chronicles of the Portuguese expansion and discoveries in India, Asia, and Brazil, a fine copy preserving all title pages; this history of King Manuel, written by Portugal’s eminent humanist and chronicler Damian de Goes, is a monumental work, much of what we today know of his reign, arguably Portugal’s Golden Age of expansion, is based on this Chronica. A beautiful copy, bearing the author's signature on title-pages.
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The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
$1250
A fascinating and illuminating survey of the damage wrought by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, compiled by American authorities following Japan's surrender. An almost serene level of cold detachment typifies the report's language, and despite being punctuated by examples of tragic and desperately human imagery and experiences, their accompanying captions and highly detailed retellings of events are mechanical to the point of being sublimely inhuman. A deeply valuable resource for students of atomic warfare and the post-atomic age.
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GLAISHER, Cecilia & James. “On the Severe Weather at the beginning of the year 1855; and on Snow and Snow-crystals.” 1855.
$18500
“The most accurate observations published before the development of photomicrography”. First edition of this skilfully executed catalogue of snowflakes, their distinctive schematic forms engraved in bright colours. A collaborative effort between husband and wife, the study simultaneously influenced the sciences and the decorative arts. One volume. Contemporary cloth.
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