Highlights

The first separately published book on Australian botany. The Specimen of the Botany of New Holland contains the first illustrations of a number of Australian species, including the waratah. According to a note in the preface the drawings on which the fine hand-coloured plates were based were done in the colony by John White, the Surgeon-General, who was a keen amateur natural history artist and collector. White’s own Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, published in 1790, celebrated the new colony’s ornithology in particular

The major monograph of Russian painter, scene and costume designer, Leon Bakst (1866-1924), the first in English, published alongside a French edition, L’Art Decorative de Leon Bakst, in the same year. Appreciation by Arsene Alexandre. Notes on the ballets by Jean Cocteau, translated from the French by Harry Melvill.

Ken Kesey looks back on the 1964 trip of the Merry Pranksters in their psychedelic bus across the United States told largely in dialogued transcript including the famed monologues of Neal Cassady and illustrated throughout with previously unpublished photographs of the voyage from coast to coast partying, handing out LSD, and travelling further. A real glimpse at the psychedelic cult tale told in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. This copy signed by Kesey, and one of a small number he individually hand marbled in swirling yellow, purple and blue paint.

We are bringing a large collection of Wisden's. Although some have had repairs to the spine, examples of early Wisden's are becoming quite hard to find in any condition.

The only complete work of Jules-Georges dit Jean Floux (1855-1892), French poet, journalist, and member of the Montmartre group Le Chat Noir. This copy inscribed by Floux to Benjamin Constant (1845-1902), one of the illustrators, and in a unique art nouveau binding signed by Louis Deze (1857-1930). Deze bindings are rare with many destroyed during World War II. The Mistresses is a “collection full of exquisite verses and promises that the author would certainly have kept, if the cruel death had not come to strike him in full youth” (Bertrand Millanvoye: Anthologie des poètes de Montmartre).

Extensive, vibrant illuminations on a manuscript French Book of Hours leaf, c.1440. Surrounding the text on three sides are illuminations in a style called rinceaux. A bar border in burnished gold, black and white has coloured buds at its top, centre and bottom from which sprout delicately coloured & gilded acanthus leaves. Other flowers, real and imagined, ivy leaves and foliage in colours and gold are borne on swirling black tendrils. Within the tendrils in the bottom margin is a strawberry, a symbol of a drop of Christ’s blood. Verso has almost identical illuminations.

Rare: all published. The beautifully drawn and handcoloured plates of The Entomology of Australia make it one of the finest of all Australian illustrated natural history books, and one of a very select group of important colour-plate books on Australian natural history issued before 1840; others in this category include the famous books by Smith and Lewin. Gray’s was the second separately published work on Australian entomology.

Sydney, 1976. First (only) edition. No.21 of only 100 numbered & signed copies, of a total edition of 200. The first hundred were retained by the author and presented to friends. Signed `to Shirley [Hazzard] and Francis [Steegmuller] with affection and happy memories of a visit David Malouf 1.1.77'

[China : c.1375]. Printed during the reign (1368-1398) of the first Ming emperor, Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (Ming Taizu), a paper note with the original cash value of a string of 1,000 copper coins, or 1 kuan.

Harper and Brothers Publishers NewYork 1866 (Ist US Edition) 8vo, 638pp + 6 adverts. Professionally rebound in half green morocco, twin coloured labels, gilt, raised bands and marbled boards, new endpapers, minor spotting in text which otherwise is in excellent condition.

London, Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1893. Tercentenary Edition. No. 91 of the large-paper edition of 350 copies.