Highlights
Each year our exhibitors bring rare, beautiful and unusual items for sale.
Here are a sample of the wide range of printed materials that were available at the 2024 Fair. If you are interested in these, please contact the exhibitor, they may still be available
2025 Highlights will be posted in June 2025
Ballarat from Soldier's Hill. Spot where gold was first found
$650
Albumen stereoview photograph. C1870. 82mm by 174mm (card). Early stereoview photograph on yellow card of the gold mines at Ballarat. 'LU' blindstamped top right corner of the card. Titled inscribed in ink on the reverse.
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[27711] Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et insulae Van-Dieman, exhibens characteres plantarum quas annis 1802-1805 ... edition secunda. ...
$4500
Brown, Robertus. Normibergae: Leonardi Schrag, 1827 second edition. Octavo, Contemporary half calf and marbled boards, all edges coloured, a few light spots, very scarce. The Prodromus is considered a masterpiece of botanical literature and "has a two-fold importance in the history of systematic botany. Its primary purpose was to record succinctly the plants of Australia collected by Robert Brown himself in 1802 and 1805 when naturalist on Flinders' voyage together with plants collected earlier by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on Cook's first voyage (1768-71.)
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The most important nineteenth-century Armenian atlas
$28500
One of the great milestones of Armenian language cartography, being the first Armenian school atlas and the second ever Armenian world atlas. It also contains one of the earliest maps to depict a proposed independent state of ‘Armenia’ cleaved out of the Ottoman Empire, a politically incendiary notion and powerful rhetorical device of the ‘Armenian National Awakening’.
China in a Series of Views, Displaying the Scenery, Architecture and Social Habits, of that Ancient Empire.
$3950
A very handsome example of George Newenham Wright's influential work, richly illustrated by Thomas Allom.
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The Selfish Gene
$750
Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. London: Oxford University Press, 1976.
First Edition. 8vo. original black boards in dustwrapper; pp. xii, 224. A fine copy. In July 2017, the book was listed as the most influential science book of all time in a poll to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Royal Society science book prize, ahead of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of SpeciesIsaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica.
The Remains Of The Day [1st Ed]
$600
First Printing [Faber & Faber, London, 1989]; black boards, white titling to spine, v. light foxing to block, a near-fine copy; in the excellent unclipped [£10.99 net], illustrated dustjacket, slight curling at top, pale stain mark rear foldover.
Winner of the 1989 Booker Prize.
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The Doors of Perception
$750
HUXLEY, Aldous.
The Doors of Perception
London: Chatto and Windus, 1954. First U.K. Edition. Hardcover : pp. [4] 5-62 [64] : blue cloth boards lettered in gilt to spine : price clipped jacket designed by John Woodcock. Small closed tear (5mm) to head of top cover; price clipped; some offsetting to the e.p.s; some foxing to the edges of the block. Very good in very good dust-jacket. Huxley's controversial essay based on his psychedelic mescalin experience. (14319)
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GUILD OF WOMEN BINDERS - SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe; HOUSMAN, Laurence (illus.). The Sensitive Plant. London: Printed for the Guild of Women Binders, 1899
Limited edition, number 22 of 50 copies printed on japon for the Guild of Women Binders and finely bound in their workshop. The bookseller Frank Karslake established the bindery in 1898 as "a way of publicising and promoting the sale of books bound by women" (Tidcombe, p. 27).
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Six issues of 'Peninsula Press', the exceptionally rare Gallipoli field news bulletin
$8000
Numbers 33, 34, 46, 57, 74, and 84, printed at General Headquarters, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, between June and October 1915
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Run River by Joan Didion
$900
Jonathan Cape, 1964. First UK edition.8vo, 264pp. A very good hardback copy. Slight wear to the edges of the dust jacket, Didion's debut novel follows the disintegration of a California family.
厳島案内地圖. [Bird's Eye View of Itsukushima].
$450
A vibrant panoramic map of the island of Itsukushima (also known as Miyajima) off the coast of Hiroshima, with a tourist guide to the island on the reverse.
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HANDBOOK OF TASMANIA: Section I. Information For Immigrants and Statistics.
$275
Hobart, John Vail, Government Printer, 1914.
Octavo, 80 pp., illustrations, original pictorial wrappers (slightly rubbed). Scarce in part form.