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.
LANGTREE, Charles W. A descriptive catalogue of rocks, minerals, and fossils, illustrative of the geology, mineralogy and mining resources of Victoria, exhibited for and on behalf of the Government
$1200
Octavo, 56 pp. Contemporary crimson morocco ornately gilt, gilt edges, a very handsome copy with an inscription on the front endpaper by James McEwan, founder of the famous Melbourne firm of ironmongers.
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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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C1547 (1806) Il Mappamondo di Fra Mauro Camaldolese Descritto ed Illustrato Da D. Placido Zurla dello Stess' Ordine
$2250
The first substantial study and printing of Fra Mauro's famous medieval Mappa Mundi.
Fra Mauro's map is considered the greatest memorial of medieval cartography and was produced between 1457 and 1459. It is a circular planisphere drawn on parchment, oriented to the south, and mounted on a wooden stretcher frame around 2m in diameter. It includes Asia, the Indian Ocean, Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic, and it took several years to complete.
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Peter Trusler | Male Eastern Rosella Inspecting a Nest Box 1978, Watercolour, 27.5 x 22 cm
$9500
Illustrated Birds of Australian Gardens, Rigby Publishers, 1980, page 68, De-accessioned from the National Bank Collection in 2022
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DICKENS, Charles. Little Dorrit.
$4000
London: Bradbury and Evans, 1855-1857. First Edition in original parts. (20 Parts published in 19). Housed in a custom made silk solander box with leather labels. All plates present including the dark plates and the frontispiece and vignette title. Includes Rigaud for Bladois at Part 15 (ten times as per Smith 1:12), errata slip in Part 16, and the Preliminary Leaves in Parts 19 & 20.
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Zoological sketches.Made for the Zoological society of London, from animals in their vivarium, in the Regent’s park.
$48500
London : Henry Graves and Company, Printsellers to Her Majesty, 1861 [actually 1856] - 67. Two volumes with 100 fine lithographed plates by Joseph Wolf. Zoological sketches is unequivocally one of the high points of nineteenth-century natural history illustration. The work features numerous Australian birds and animals. "WITHOUT EXCEPTION, THE BEST ALL-ROUND ANIMAL PAINTER THAT EVER LIVED" (Sir Edwin Landseer).
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Churchill, Winston S.: EPHEMERA FROM THE STATE FUNERAL OF SIR WINSTON LEONARD SPENCER-CHURCHILL.
$7500
Churchill, Winston S.: EPHEMERA FROM THE STATE FUNERAL OF SIR WINSTON LEONARD SPENCER-CHURCHILL . . . 30th January 1965. Five items, comprising: 1. The Order of Service for the Funeral. 2. Ceremonial to be observed at the Funeral. 3. Invitation to the Funeral, issued by the Earl Marshal on Command from The Queen, to the Rt. Hon. Enoch Powell. 4. Seating ticket for Enoch Powell. 5. General Instructions. Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1965. $7500
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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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