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.
Gamiani ou Deux Nuits d’Exces
$1500
The first serious reprint of Gamiani, with the text revised against the original edition, and the preface, by Louis Perceau, for the first time attempting a bibliography of the much reprinted work. One of 300 copies, this one with the plates hand-coloured.
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Planisphère mobile
$3500
Paris : chez Bachelier, 1847. This rare scientific instrument is a portable, adjustable star chart that displays exactly which stars and constellations are visible in the sky at any given date and time, and which can be used without any prerequisite mathematical knowledge. It was designed by Ginot Desroys (or Des-Rois), a female scientific instrument maker and author of a number of works on astronomy and geography.
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Chart of the N. and W. Parts of Bass
$6750
Rare and important, early c.19th hand coloured engraved chart of Bass Strait and the Victorian Coast by Lieutenant James Grant who was given command of the Lady Nelson with the instructions to sail her to Sydney
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Nu-Scene International
$500
Newsletter of the Elaine Barrie Project, a Melbourne crossdressing and transgender support and social group formed in 1979 as a breakaway from Seahorse Victoria.
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CRICKET. Souvenir programme for the 1948 Australian test tour of England, signed by the Don, his 16 fellow players, and the team manager, Keith Johnson. 1948.
$2850
“The Invincibles”. An impressive collection of signatures gathered by a steward onboard RMS Strathaird, the P&O vessel that brought Bradman and his now-legendary team to England. Pleasingly, Sidney Barnes, who averaged 56 with the willow during the tour, has signed with a pen rather than using his customary rubber stamp. One pamphlet. Original wrappers.
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![地球儀. [Early Japanese Globe in its Original Box].](https://rarebookfair.com/assets/catalogues/books@asiabookroom.com/220581_01.jpg)
地球儀. [Early Japanese Globe in its Original Box].
$2750
A miniature globe produced in 1875 by Mori Kinseki, a cartographer, noted lithographer and Nanga artist. The geographical detail is finely printed in delicate colours, with clear and precise line work. In the early Meiji period, the globe carried considerable symbolic significance, symbolising Japan's opening to the world. By the 1880s, globes were being introduced into primary schools for the teaching of geography. This earlier example is a scarce survivor.
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Caesar (Gaius Julius) THE COMMENTARIES OF CAESAR
$20000
translated into English. To which is prefixed A discourse concerning the Roman art of war. Engraved frontispiece portrait, plus 85 plates numbered to 86. Contemporary calf, the boards lightly scuffed and rubbed, the spine quite worn; Printed for J. and R. Tonson [& others], London, 1753. First edition.
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A work at the forefront of Renaissance ethnography, with woodcuts by Burgkmair
$44000
Botero, Giovanni
Le relationi universali [...], divise in sette parti. Quinta impressione stampate & ricorrette. (With:) Aggiunta alla quarta parte dell'Indie [...], 1622-1623. Venice. Alessandro Vecchi.
A pioneering work of Renaissance ethnography, in its rarer revised and augmented form, including the "Aggiunta" and additional woodcuts by the great German printmaker Hans Burgkmair, depicting fantastical and legendary creatures believed to inhabit the far reaches of the world, as well as indigenous peoples of Africa, Arabia, etc. Arabia.
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BECKETT, Samuel. The Unnamable.
$2150
London: Calder & Boyars (1975). First UK edition. 132 pp. Fine in fine dust jacket. Translated by Beckett from his original French text. The first separate publication of this novel in the UK. SIGNED by Beckett on the title page.
WALLACE, David Foster. The Broom of the System.
$2750
NY: Viking (1987). First edition. 467 pp. Corner crease to front free endpaper, else fine (with expected page toning) in fine dust jacket. Wallace’s first book.
Float - Anne Carson
$250
A collection of twenty-two chapbooks whose order is unfixed and whose topics are various. Part of a collection of contemporary literature being exhibited at the 2026 Melbourne Rare Book Fair.
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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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Rare complete first edition of Visentini's print series with views of Venice after Canaletto, "crucial to forming the image of Venice in the mind of its visitors"
$74000
[CANALETTO]. VISENTINI, Antonio. Urbis Venetiarum prospectus celebriores, ex Antonii Canal tabulis XXXVIII.
Venice, Joannem Baptistam Pasquali, 1742. 3 parts in 1 volume. Oblong folio (ca. 36.5 x 52.5 cm). With 3 letterpress title pages printed in red and black with engraved vignettes by Visentini, the original engraved title page for the first series (Prospectus Magni Canali), a double portrait of Canaletto and Visentini by Visentini after Giovanni Battista Piazetta and XIV, XII and XII numbered engraved prints with familiar views based upon 38 paintings by Canaletto, engraved by Visentini.
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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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MAXWELL, James Clerk: A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1881). J.J. Thomson's working copy
$250000
Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1881 (second edition, revised)/ 1873.
The personal working set of Sir Joseph John Thomson (Nobel Prize winner and discoverer of the electron), with extensive annotations in his hand made while editing the third edition of Maxwell's important treatise. Later provenance from his son, Sir George Paget Thomson, also a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.
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Complete first English collected Böhme, with overlays
$44000
Böhme, Jakob. The Works of Jacob Behmen, the Teutonic Theosopher, 1764 (Vols. I-II) [Vol. IIwith additional title-page: printed for Joseph Richardson, 1763]; for G. Robinson, 1772 (Vol. III) and 1781 (Vol. IV). London. Printed for M. Richardson.
A rare example of a complete set: the first collected English edition of Jacob Böhme’s visionary theology, assembled under the aegis of William Law and edited after his death by George Ward and Thomas Langcake, with earlier translations by Sparrow, Ellistone and Blunden, here preserved as a full four-volume set in contemporary calf.
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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.
Guichard, Sylvain: Golo, le petit chien rose. Bruxelles, Edition Pelletier (1947).
$250
32,3 x 24,4 cm. 20 unnumbered pages with colour illustrations, original boards with cover illustration.
First edition of this original Belgian picture book about dogs, which recounts the adventures of Golo, an adventurous pink terrier who, amongst other things, ends up in the circus.
![Letters Written in France by Watkin Tench [FIRST ED, 1796, FRENCH REVOLUTION]](https://rarebookfair.com/assets/catalogues/orchardbookshopadl@gmail.com/Tench-France-MRBF-highlight.jpg)
Letters Written in France by Watkin Tench [FIRST ED, 1796, FRENCH REVOLUTION]
$4000
Candid, readable account of capture & internment during the French Revolution. These fascinating letters recount 6 months in "study of the effects of the Revolution in that remote corner of Brittany". Tench [1758?–1833], British Marine Officer, author & astute observationalist, led a varied & dramatic life involving several key historical events: he served in the war for American independence; then in 1788 he landed in Botany Bay with the First Fleet [his published accounts provide important early documentation of the colony]. Attractive modern rebind in excellent condition.
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![Kubasta, Vojtech, The Day of the Bison Hunt [An American Indian Camp]](https://rarebookfair.com/assets/catalogues/bookshop@hincebooks.com.au/IMG_3160.JPG)
Kubasta, Vojtech, The Day of the Bison Hunt [An American Indian Camp]
$330
London, Bancroft & Co., circa 1962. F'cap folio, 8pp. text, near fine in original cloth backed pictorial boards. With loosely inserted publisher's advertisement. One of Kubasta's elaborate pop-ups, moveable parts in working order. An exceptional copy.
Betts’s New Portable Terrestrial Globe
$3500
Impressive 21 inch collapsible terrestrial globe made by Betts in the 1870s.
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