Highlights

Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1938. Octavo, frontispiece, 24 Percy Lindsay illustrations, map on endpapers, 4pp. publisher's advertisements, some foxing but very good in original orange cloth lettered and ruled in black with bright pictorial dustwrapper (bit chipped). First edition thus. First issue dustwrapper with fabulous (unsigned) Percy Lindsay art (subsequently issued with a variant silhouette pictorial dustwrapper).

Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1936. Demy octavo, small bookseller's label on front pastedown, very good in original bright burgundy cloth lettered in gilt on spine with Norman Lindsay dustwrapper, few blemishes but in uncommonly good condition. First edition. Second volume of Penton's unfinished trilogy. Published as Giant's Stride in the UK. Very scarce with the fabulous Lindsay dustwrapper.

London - Sydney, Collins, 1964. Octavo, some marginalia, original tan cloth lettered in gilt on spine with Sidney Nolan pictorial dustwrapper. First edition. Signed & inscribed by the author in the year of publication for the ABC television journalist Gerald Lyons: 'For Gerald Lyons with great respect and best wishes. George Johnston. Melb. 1964.' Quintessential Melbourne novel, set in the 1930s. Signed copies &c. are uncommon.

Spectacular image of the most desirable and sought after images of the Gang-gang Cockatoo from John Gould’s, The Birds of Australia

The valuable journal of the overly ambitious and power-hungry Captain Bloomfield Douglas, encompassing three important aspects of Australian colonial history: the evolution of the colony’s communications with the wider world, the quest to survey its coasts accurately, and the placing of control over colonized fringes in the hands of ill-suited soldiers of fortune.

[Sydney?] : [G.J. Broinowski?], 1897. One of the rarest publications on Australian ornithology, one of only two known copies, the only one in private hands. In addition to its obvious desirability as an Australian colour plate book of almost unprocurable rarity, The avi-fauna of Australia is also meaningful insight into the debt Broinowski felt to Gould, and the respect he afforded the scientific community who contributed to our collective understanding of Australian ornithology. Provenance: Quentin Keynes (1921 – 2003), explorer, filmmaker, and great-grandson of Charles Darwin.

Beautifully presented watercolour album, in oval format Orihon (folding) binding with silk cloth covered boards, gilt page edges and traditional ties, in an oval album with fourteen signed and folded watercolours of Mount Fuiji, birds, trees.

Rare C.16th woodcut map of the world on an ovaloid projection set within an ornate framework and surrounded by sixteen wind heads by Joannes Myritius (1534-1587).

First edition, first printing of one of the masterpieces of early 20th century erotica, noted as being the most expensive clandestine publication of the time with 46 finely printed and hand coloured illustrations by Jean Dulac. The story by Marcel Valotaire tells of the sexual awakening of a young female student, Nelly, mostly in the hands of her Latin tutor, Jean. One of 240 numbered copies on Arches (from a total edition of 295). The 2 volumes here bound as one in a fine three quarter leather binding retaining the two original illustrated wrapper panels. DUTEL 2054.

Japan : Nara period [764 – 770 CE]. A rare example of the earliest printed text to have survived in Eastern or Western cultures that can be verifiably dated, predating the movable type of Gutenberg by some seven centuries. A great treasure and rarity in the history of the printed word.

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.