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.

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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Alastair: Wilde (Oscar) THE SPHINX.
$2750
Alastair: Wilde (Oscar) THE SPHINX. Illustrated and decorated by Alastair. John Lane, The Bodley Head, London, 1920. First edition thus, limited to 1,000 copies. *With the publisher's blind 'Review Copy' stamp at head of title page. The Sphinx was originally published in 1894, although in the introductory note to this volume, Robert Ross states that it was written 'before Oscar Wilde's first volume was issued in 1881'. Alastair was the pseudonym of Hans Henning Voight (1887-1969). $2,750.00
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Land Grant document, 3 February 1823 : in favor of THOMAS GEORGE GREGSON, 300 acres in Van Diemen’s Land, in the District of Bath... Registered in Sydney, 30 June 1823. Signed by SIR THOMAS BRISBANE.
$1000
Manuscript on vellum, with seal. 320x460mm, folded. In very good clean condition. *** For Gregson, a volatile political figure in VDL, one of the 'Patriotic Six' and (very briefly) Tasmania's second Premier, see ADB 1. The land was near Jericho, on the Jordan River, and the grant included the services of three transported convicts. Gregson was alleged to have bribed the surveyor G.W. Evans, with a piano, to swear that there was insufficient land adjacent to his first grant for an additional location, thus allowing him to take later grants in a more favourable location (this being one of them?)
Manuscript promissory note for £67.10 : ROBERT LATHROP MURRAY to Derwent Bank, 13 January 1845.
$850
Manuscript on a slip of paper 105x205mm. The text reads: Hobart Town January 13 : 1845 – / Three months after date I promise to pay to the order of the Managing Director of the Derwent Bank the sum of Sixty Seven Pounds Ten Shillings for value recd / £67.10 / [signed] R.L. Murray /Payable at the Derwent Bank / [signature indecipherable] / Due 16/4/45. Due 16 April’ written later in another hand across top of the document, faint ink stamp (of the bank?), a number written across the text, ‘R. Murray’ written on verso.
AUSTEN, Jane Pride and Prejudice; With a preface by George Saintsbury and illustrations by Hugh Thomson
$3000
London: George Allen, 1894. Signed binding. Octavo : pp. xxvii (xviii, blank) 476 (2) : 101 B&W illustrations by Thomson including Frontis and Vignette Title : lacking original peacock binding but in a gorgeous full leather art deco signed binding by M.G. de R.R. dated 1905 : double gilt ruled leather turn-ins : a.e.g. with subtle gauffering to the edges of the block. Top board expertly re-jointed; minor soiling to e.p.s. Near fine. Item #3924 A lovely clean copy of Austen's supremely popular Pride and Prejudice (Peacock edition in an art deco signed binding).
Austen, Jane [R.W.Chapman (coll.)], The Novels of Jane Austen. Five Volumes [with] Jane Austen's Letters to her sister Cassandra and others [2 Vols.]
$7500
The Clarendon Press, 1923. Lrg Ed. Limited 1000 copies, 950 of which were for sale. 1923/1932. 7 vols. 8vo. contemporary full green morocco gilt, raised bands, uncut, marbled endpapers; pp. The Novels (1923) Vol. I Sense and Sensibility, xii, [ii], 427pp; Vol. II Pride and Prejudice, xiii, [i], 415pp; Vol. III Mansfield Park, Lover's Vows, xii, [ii], 567pp; Vol. IV Emma, xi, [iii], 521pp ; Vol V Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, xiii, [i], 252pp, 1-310pp. The Letters (1932). Vol I.1796-1809. xlvi, 1-266, [34]; xxx, 267-510, [122]. Coloured frontispieces, illustrations and maps, throughout.