Highlights
Each year our exhibitors bring extraordinarily rare, beautiful and unusual items for sale.
Leading up to the fair, you will find here, highlights, selected by our exhibitors, of the wide range of items that will be on exhibition and for sale at this year's fair.
Bookmark this page and visit again as our exhibitors will be adding highlights over the next two months
If something is of interest, please contact the exhibitor directly. They will welcome your enquiry.
The Man with the Golden Gun | Ian Fleming
$1995
First Edition, First Impression, Second State, so not the extremely rare first State example so avidly sought worldwide (with a golden gun on the front board). Still, a rare book in this near fine condition, nevertheless and will certainly appeal to specialist Fleming collectors as well as keen Bond devotees.
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![齊白石畫集. [Collection of 22 Watercolours].](https://rarebookfair.com/assets/catalogues/books@asiabookroom.com/china_highres-4.jpg)
齊白石畫集. [Collection of 22 Watercolours].
$1950
Biography of Qi Baishi (in Chinese) + 22 colour woodblock prints with manuscript titles and red artist's chop, 31.5 x 22.5 cms, traditional Chinese leporello/concertina binding, floral silk brocade boards with silk ties. A fine compilation of woodblock prints: flowers and animals, by the renowned artist Qi Baishi (1864-1957).
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![[Meiji Period Japanese Moveable Type].](https://rarebookfair.com/assets/catalogues/books@asiabookroom.com/220081_01_hr.jpg)
[Meiji Period Japanese Moveable Type].
$3500
411 examples of Japanese wooden moveable type. The moveable type include kanji, hiragana, katakana and numbers both Japanese and Arabic. The pieces of wooden type shows some signs of use but overall a very good collection.
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THOMPSON, Theophilus. Chess Problems.
$73200
Scarce first edition of the author’s sole work, marking the starting point of chess book publishing in African American history. Born into slavery in Maryland, Thompson became a house-servant following his emancipation and learned the game in 1872 after meeting John Hanshew, later the editor of the Maryland Chess Review. Thompson published this collection of 101 prodigious problems the next year, aged 18.
Moby Dick
$39000
Melville, Herman.
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.
1st edition. 1851. New York: Harper & Brothers. Cochran copy, ex-Fisk Memorial Library, Natchez, Mississippi.12mo. Original brown cloth gilt, publisher’s circular blindstamp upper board in bespoke clamshell case; pp. xxiv (last blank), 636 (last blank), [6 publisher’s catalogue)]. [Tanselle 2]
Despite initial unfavourable criticism, there is good reason why Moby Dick often makes lists of the top ten books ever written. It contains the best exposition of Melville’s philosophical musings, every sentence loaded with import.
Christina, the Maid of the South Seas; a Poem.
$4000
MITFORD, Mary Russell .
London: Printed by A. J. Valpy for F. C. and J. Rivington, 1811. First Edition.
Mary Russell Mitford's (1787-1855) second published title.A metrical tale based on the first news of discovery of the last surviving mutineer of the H. M. S. Bounty and a generation of British-Tahitian children on Pitcairn Island in 1811. As a manuscript, the work was apparently read and corrected by James Burney who sailed with Captain James Cook and the proofs were corrected by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A scarce item.
The Resolution beating through the ice, with the Discovery in the most eminent danger
$3500
Important, early c.19th hand coloured aquatint by John Webber (1752-1793) artist on Cook’s third and final voyage depicting the Resolution and the Discovery surrounded by ice flows.
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AUSTEN, Jane; THOMSON, Hugh (illus.). Pride and Prejudice.
$15700
First fully illustrated edition, one of 250 large paper copies issued in Britain with the illustrations specially printed on China paper and laid down; a further 25 copies were released in the US. This fine Rivière binding displays the very highest standards of the bindery’s craftsmanship.
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![Charles Darwin: Autograph Letter Signed. Down Farnborough, Kent, 8 [Aug. 1850].](https://rarebookfair.com/assets/catalogues/info@autographenhandlung.de/72885.jpg)
Charles Darwin: Autograph Letter Signed. Down Farnborough, Kent, 8 [Aug. 1850].
$44700
An important letter to Nathaniel Thomas Wetherell which underscores Darwin's belief in the scientific significance of the study of Cirripedia (barnacles).
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A Selection of Gollancz SF Classics
Victor Gollancz, the publishing house, strongly associated with Science Fiction and Fantasy literature was originally founded in 1927 and became a prominent UK publisher, particularly through its imprint Gollancz Science Fiction. Notable authors published under the imprint include Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, J.G.Ballard and Ursula Le Guin.
Strugatsky, Arkady & Boris, The Snail on the Slope. 1st UK edition, 1980, $350
Heinlein, Robert A., Time for the Stars. New edition, 1985, $50
Mitchison, Naomi, Memoirs of a Spacewoman. 1st edition, 1962, $250
And Quiet Flows the Don | Mikhail Sholokhov
$3100
And Quiet Flows The Don by Mikhail Sholokhov (1934 First UK Edition, First Impression in April):8vo, 755pp.
Obviously very scarce as a first edition and impression from April 1934, the wonderful patina of age is very obvious as the novel in four volumes traces the lives and struggles of the Cossacks of the Don River Valley during the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the terrible Russian Civil War for the White armies against the Red Bolsheviks. Originally published in a Soviet magazine in 1928-1932 and then in 1940.
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Ah! Nana
$1200
Complete set of the French women’s comic magazine. Ah!Nana ran for nine issues, each with its own theme, coming to a short end following the magazine being banned to minors after the publication of the eighth issue devoted to homosexuality. This led the editorial team to go all in on the ninth and final issue, devoting it to incest, leading to the French censorship Commission banning the publication, labelling it pornographic.
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Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
$5500
First edition of the highly influential autobiographical account of De Quincey’s laudanum addiction. The foundation work of drug literature.
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"THE GREAT COLORPLATE BOOK OF THE NORTH PACIFIC" (Forbes). CHORIS (Louis). Voyage Pittoresque autour du monde ...
$250000
First edition. Rare coloured issue. 105 lithographed plates, folding map & 2 further maps. Folio. Contemporary diced calf with gilt border, rebacked, lightly worn, some toning and spotting to plates & pale dampstaining to final six, repaired tear one plate. Paris,1822.
“One of the very valuable and fundamental works on Alaska, California, and the Hawaiian islands” (Lada-Mocarski).
CURIE, Marie. “Radio-Active Substances.”
$31400
First edition in English of Curie’s famous dissertation, rare in such excellent condition in the original parts. Serialized across 15 issues of The Chemical News, it was applauded by the examination committee for being the greatest scientific contribution ever made in a doctoral thesis. Later the same year, Curie received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of radioactivity.
Les Amours de Psyche et de Cupidon
$5500
One of the most striking editions of Fontaine’s adaptation of the story of Cupid and Psyche with coloured stipple engravings by Bonnefoy, Mme Demonchy, and Colibert after Jean-Frederic Schall. This copy extra illustrated and finely bound by the Paris bookbinder Salvador David.
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The Birds of Australia
$750000
London : printed by Richard and John Taylor for the author, 1848.
The first comprehensive survey of the birds of Australia, with hand-coloured illustrations and descriptions of 681 species, 328 of which were new to Western science and which Gould was the first to describe.
The finest of all Australian colour plate books, and Gould’s ‘greatest achievement’ (Wantrup).
Provenance:
Sir Edward Charles Stirling (1848-1919), Director of the South Australian Museum 1895 - 1913
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AUSTEN, Jane - TEMPLE BOOK CLUB. Remarkable manuscript archive of a private subscribers’ library.
$62700
An intriguing collection of book lists, invoices, and receipts from the Temple Book Club, which operated between 1812 and 1819, a period during which first editions of works such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park were acquired at discounted rates and circulated among its members, a select group of barristers from one of London’s Inns of Court.
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![Marlborough, His Life and Times [Presentation copy] [OFFERED WITH] A.L.S. from Clementine Churchill and additional Churchilliana](https://rarebookfair.com/assets/catalogues/orders@archivesfinebooks.com.au/15544_7.jpg)
Marlborough, His Life and Times [Presentation copy] [OFFERED WITH] A.L.S. from Clementine Churchill and additional Churchilliana
$25000
Volume I INSCRIBED, "To Geoffrey Hale from Winston S. Churchill 1955" (on the recto of the frontispiece) : Volume II INSCRIBED, "From Winston S. Churchill 1955" (on first blank) : autograph letter SIGNED from Clementine Churchill to, "My dear Doctor Hale" expressing her gratitude, "for all you did for my sister, not only during her last illness, but also for many years." (Chartwell, 13 February, 1955) : two Christmas cards from Winston and Clementine Churchill (one with autograph note from Clementine), and an invitation and order of ceremony for the presentation to Churchill on his 80th.
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Charles Troedel. The Melbourne Album, containing a Series of Views of Melbourne & Country Districts.
$12000
Oblong folio, lithographed titling-wrapper on cream paper, bound in as title-page as issued, twelve fine tinted lithographed plates,
Very rare: one of the short sets of twelve elegant tinted lithographs that make up Troedel's Melbourne Album of 1863-4, "perhaps the finest work of urban topography produced in Australia in the nineteenth century" (Wantrup). Notable contemporary artists including Nicholas Chevalier, Eugen von Guerard, Edward Gilks and Henry Gritten contributed to the Album.
Alasdair Gray, Lanark
$750
Gray, Alasdair. Lanark. A Life in 4 Books. 1st thus ‘Definitive Edition’,1985. Edinburgh: Canongate. 8vo. Original black cloth gilt in dustjacket; pp. [viii (last blank)], 562 (last blank), illustrated and decorated throughout by the author. No. 747 of a limited edition of 1000 copies, numbered, signed and additionally inscribed by Alasdair Gray. A little sunning and spotting, a very good copy.
The author’s first book, a novel written over a period of almost thirty years, combining realist and dystopian surrealist depictions of his home city of Glasgow. First assembled in one book in 1981.
Chart of the N. and W. Parts of Bass’s Straits
$6750
Rare and important, early c.19th hand coloured engraved chart by Lieutenant James Grant who was given command of the Lady Nelson with the instructions to sail her to Sydney and hand her over to Matthew Flinders.
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The Beatles: Autographed Magazine by all four Beatles.
$31300
A February 1966 edition of the French magazine ‘La Semaine’ that has been autographed on the front cover by The Beatles in black felt tipped pen. The photo on the front of the magazine pictures the famous image of The Beatles in their famous grey collarless suits which was taken by Dezo Hoffman in his studio in Wardour Street, London, England in April 1963. The autographs were obtained during The Beatles tour of Germany which took place between 24th and 26th June 1966.
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