Highlights

Each year our exhibitors bring rare, beautiful and unusual items for sale.

Here are just a few of the exhibitors' highlights that were at the Fair in 2023!

There are a number of pages of highlights. To browse all the highlights - choose a page from the list below.

You can also check the highlights listed under your favourite booksellers in the exhibitor directory.

Although the 2023 Fair has now closed, some of these items may still be available from our Exhibitors if you wish to contact them.

LAVOISIER, M.; HENRY, Thomas [Trans.] Essays on the effects produced by various processes on Atmospheric Air; with a particular view to an investigation of the constitution of the acids.
$2000
London: Warrington, Printed by W. Eyres for J. Johnston, 1783. First English Language Edition. Octavo : pp. vii [viii] + [2] 141 + [3, List of Books lately published by J. Johnston] : now custom clamshell box with red leather title panel lettered in gilt. [DUVEEN 336] Lacks covers and half title; toned, foxed and brittle; title page detached; thereafter first gathering detached; chips and water stains. The collected essays show the development of Lavoisier's thinking and in the penultimate essay (VIII) the term "oxyginous principle" (principe oxygin, i.e. oxygen) appears for the first time.
Nansen (Fridtjof) ESKIMO LIFE.
$1200
Nansen (Fridtjof) ESKIMO LIFE. Translated by William Archer. Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1893. First edition. *In 1888 Nansen's team made the first successful crossing of Greenland's interior, spending several months living among the Inuit. The English translation includes revisions made by Nansen. The translator also 'requested and received Dr. Nansen's permission to suppress one or two especially nauseous details of Eskimo manners, which seemed to have no particular ethnological significance' [translator's preface]. $1,200
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Les Quatre Livres de l'Architecture d'Andre' Palladio.
$5500
Rare French language edition of Palladio's famous Quattro Libri dell' Architettura, published in Paris by Edme Martin in 1650. This edition was the last to be printed from the woodblocks of the first Venetian edition of 1570. Prosaic practical advice for architects, not builders, hence an expensive book. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Printing and the Mind of Man, no. 92 (listing the second edition, with the same plates as here). A very good copy with splendid provenance from the Berlin Royal Library (with stamp to title-page). Leading architects of the day would have consulted this very copy.
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