Highlights
Each year our exhibitors bring extraordinarily rare, beautiful and unusual items for sale.
Here is a selection of the items offered in 2025 by our exhibitors. These may still be available for purchase. If interested, contact the respective exhibitor directlyCloser to the 2026 Fair, new highlights of what will be on offer in 2026 will be posted. Bookmark this page and visit again to see the 2026 highlights.
![ONE OF TEN KNOWN BOOKS FROM SIR WALTER RALEGH'S PRISON LIBRARY IN THE TOWER OF LONDON. [RALEIGH (Walter).] VIGNIER (Nicolas, the younger). Theatre de L‘Antechrist.](https://rarebookfair.com/assets/catalogues/mark@maggs.com/221171-_3.jpg)
ONE OF TEN KNOWN BOOKS FROM SIR WALTER RALEGH'S PRISON LIBRARY IN THE TOWER OF LONDON. [RALEIGH (Walter).] VIGNIER (Nicolas, the younger). Theatre de L‘Antechrist.
$72000
First edition. Small Folio. 692, [14 (index/errata)] pp. Diagonal closed tear from a paper flaw in EEe2. Contemporary limp vellum, sewn on four tawed leather slips, the covers tooled in the centre with the armorial crest of Sir Walter Ralegh. [Saumur] 1610.
Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov
$530
This is the First UK Edition of Lolita, which is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The protagonist and narrator is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. Remarkably scarce.
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Les Paradis Artificiels: Opium et Haschisch
$4000
First edition of Baudelaire’s Artificial Paradises, on the drug experiences of hashish and opium and their relationship with creative expression, being accounts from within the walls of Le Club des Haschischins and a translation and adaptation of Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.
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The Satanic Verses | Signed Copy | Salman Rushdie
$8000
This immaculate first edition, signed and dedicated by the author, will further become one of the prize editions in English literature. Rushdie is understandably unlikely to ever commit to any public signings again.
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Ongeluckige voyagie van het schip Batavia uytgevaren onder’t beleydt van den E. Francois Pelsaert,
$55000
Amsterdam : Gillis Joosten Saeghman, [c.1663]. A rare early illustrated edition of Pelsaert’s account of the wreck of the Batavia. The infamous story of the wreck of the Batavia was first published in Amsterdam in 1647, and the first edition is of the utmost rarity. Five editions followed in the seventeenth century, including two pirated versions, and all of these are considered rare. The Saeghman edition is held in only two Australian collections (neither in Western Australia) and a handful of libraries internationally.
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Cruikshank (George) CRUIKSHANK'S WATER COLOURS.
$1200
A. & C. Black, London, 1903. De luxe edition, limited to 300 numbered copies signed by the publisher. Inman 227. *From the library of Australian pathologist and medical historian, Professor Harold Dallas Attwood, with his bookplate on verso of upper free endpaper; later from the library of David Levine, Sydney, whose book label is above Attwood’s. The main text consists of extracts from Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist; William Harrison Ainsworth's The Miser's Daughter; and W. H. Maxwell's History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798; all with Cruikshank's accompanying illustrations.
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![GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI, "LA TOMBA DI NERONE" [THE TOMB OF NERO]; From "GROTTESCHI".](https://rarebookfair.com/assets/catalogues/sartoniprints@yahoo.it/PIRA-Grottesque1.jpg)
GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI, "LA TOMBA DI NERONE" [THE TOMB OF NERO]; From "GROTTESCHI".
$2750
GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI
(Mogliano Veneto 1720-Roma 1778)
Italian school
"LA TOMBA DI NERONE"
[THE TOMB OF NERO]
c.1750
TECHNIQUE: Etching, Burin, Drypoint & Burnishing
DESCRIPTION:
"The Tomb of Nero", from the series called “I GROTTESCHI” (Grotesques).
In 1750 Piranesi collected in a miscellaneous volume published at the expense of the editor Giovanni Bouchard a collection of the works engraved by him up to that moment, some already published, others unpublished. The volume was published with the title serie "Opere Varie di Architettura Prospettive Grotteschi..."
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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.
Barret (Robert) THE THEORIKE AND PRACTIKE OF MODERNE WARRES.
$15000
Discoursed in Dialogue wise. Printed for William Ponsonby, London, 1598. *'A compilation from foreign writers. It is said that Shakespeare in the passage "The gallant militarist that had the whole theoric of war in the knot of his scarf, and the practice in the chaps of his dagger" (All's Well That Ends Well, act iv, scene iii), was alluding to this book' [Cockle, page 57]. The table of 'forrain words' at the end is effectively the first English glossary of military terminology preceding the anonymously published Military Dictionary of 1702.
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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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Expedition Antarctique Belge. Au Pays des Manchots: Recit du Voyage de la Belgica
$1800
Account of the captain of the RV Belgica, Georges Lecointe, the second in command of the first Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897-1899. Considered the first expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. This copy bound in full vellum with a manuscript letter from Lecointe bound in.
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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.
Bib and Bub Painting Book. New Stories by May Gibbs
$1250
Oblong quarto (210 × 305 mm), [24] pages of black and white comic-strip artwork plus text on the covers.
A rare and charming 'colouring book', the last of May Gibbs' Bib and Bub titles.
Poor Fellow My Country. By Xavier Herbert
$900
Poor Fellow My Country
By Xavier Herbert
First Signed Limited Edition
No.14 of 50. Half leather
One of 3 copies personally signed on the book and not on an affixed label.
"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).
Crown Lands of Australia - Inscribed
$500
Well-bound copy of Campbell's Crown Lands of Australia with inscription from the author to the previous owners, The Geelong Mechanic's Institure.
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PSEUDO-ARISTOTLE. Aristotle’s Master-Piece.
$36600
Rare early edition of “the first sex manual written in English” (Norman), for centuries the most popular compendium on conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. This copy has contemporary annotations by a husband and wife in the midst of conceiving and giving birth to their second child. Winifred and Francis Witham of South Normanton both inscribed the book in 1699, two years after their marriage.
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![雙六式國史早わかり. [Sugoroku - Quick View of Japan's History].](https://rarebookfair.com/assets/catalogues/books@asiabookroom.com/216826_01.jpg)
雙六式國史早わかり. [Sugoroku - Quick View of Japan's History].
$650
Large colour folding sugoroku game, 93 x 125cm.
This unique and visually rich sugoroku-style educational chart was published in 1927 in Shizuoka by Yamamura Azusa. Intending to present Japanese history through the lens of the imperial lineage, Yamamura sought to make the subject accessible and engaging for children by structuring it as a game. Using the familiar sugoroku board format, he transforms historical chronology into a path of progress, starting with the mythological creation of Japan by the sun goddess Amaterasu at the centre of the chart.
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CHURCHILL (Winston S.) The Second World War: The Gathering Storm; The Finest Hour; The Grand Alliance; The Hinge of Fate; Closing the Ring; Triumph and Tragedy.
$30750
First editions, first printings. Six volumes. Numerous maps and diagrams, some folding and others full-page, throughout each volume. 8vo. Original black cloth, spines lettered in gilt, top edges in red, supplied dust jackets. London, Cassell & Co. Ltd. 1948-1954.
Inscribed to Grace Hamblin, "the longest-serving member of Churchill’s secretarial staff."
Orbis Terrarum Nova et Accuratissima Tabula.
$11500
Second state of van Loon’s famous, rare double hemisphere map of the world first printed in Amsterdam 1666, issued with the additions of the dedication to Charles II and his coat-of-arms for Moses Pitt’s English Atlas.
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First time this pair have been offered for sale
$15000
Two first edition volumes from the library of Lady Constance Malleson: The Waves [offered with] The Rainbow [together with] A small archive of personal correspondence from the executrix of Malleson’s estate (Phyllis Urch) to a friend. The two books are from the library of Lady Constance Malleson: pacifist, actress, and long-term lover of Bertrand Russell.
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