Highlights

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

As we have not had a fair since 2019 due to the pandemic, our booksellers have curated many lovely and desirable books to exhibit.

Here are just a few of the exhibitors' highlights you can expect to see at the Fair in 2022!

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

Very early monastic bible leaf, Late 11th - early 12th century. Beautiful Carolingian script.
$7400
A late 11th century. Bible leaf, Italy, 1075-1125 with an archetypal Carolingian script. Hair follicles from the animal used for the parchment are clearly visible. The leaf's margins have been cropped to become a flyleaf in a slightly smaller volume at a later date and the four brown marks, one near each corner, were caused by the rusting of metal bosses in the new volume’s binding. The text is from the First Book of Samuel, chapters 24 & 25. A remarkable example of large, very early Italian monastic Bibles with clear, rounded and generously spaced late Carolingian minuscule script.
Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa.
$6000
In which are described the Character & the Condition of the Dutch Colonists of the Cape of Good Hope, & the several Tribes of Natives beyond its Limit. ...Comprehending also A Topographical & Statistical Sketch of the Cape Colony...2 volumes. Second & best edition, with additions ... By John Barrow London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1806. 4to. Original full calf with gilt borders to front & rear covers. Spines rebacked. Marbled end-papers. With 8 full-page coloured aquatints by S. Daniell, 9 folding charts of which the coloured ones show some offsetting, & Direction for Placing the Plates leaf.
Volcano with Blue Lake and Plains 1979 by Shay Docking
$8500
Volcanic landscape by this important artist, often featured in exhibitions in Public Galleries in Australia and New Zealand but still little known in her home state. Shay Docking (1928 - 1998) was born in Warrnambool and grew up at Tower Hill. Her views of Tower Hill are in the Warrnambool Gallery collection. This was from her Volcanic Plains Series 1979. It is Pastel and acrylic on paper on board, 76.2 x 97.8 cm, Signed. See recent article by Rhonda Dredge, Inner City News A dramatic modernist with a fluid line https://www.innercitynews.com.au/a-dramatic-modernist-with-a-fluid-line
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[COOK] Nachrichten von dem Leben und den Seereisen des berühmten Capitain Cook.
$250000
Reval [Tallinn, Estonia] ; und Leipzig : bey Albrecht und Compagnie, 1780. [Bound with] Briefe aus England ... Reval [= Tallinn, Estonia] & Leipzig, Albrecht und Compagnie, 1780. Two works in one volume. “Undoubtedly the first account of Cook’s death to be published in book form” (Beddie). An extremely rare German account of the death of Captain James Cook in Hawaii on 14 February 1779, published in Tallinn in Estonia, together with a letter concerning the 1775 Spanish voyage to the west coast of North America by Bodega y Quadra (1744-1794), also in German, with many references to Cook.
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Gsell, Emile. - [Saigon] No. 2
$450
[Saigon]. [Circa 1866]. Albumen silver photograph 19.8 x 26.6 cm, image inscribed "No. 2." lower right, mounted on stiff card, 20.1 x 26.6 cm, a trifle wrinkled, but in good condition. Emile Gsell learned photography in the military and probably arrived in Saigon with the French Expeditionary force. His studio in Saigon was in operation from 1866 until his death there in 1879. Gsell was fortunate to join the 1866 Ernest Doudart de Lagrée (1823-68) Expedition along the Mekong and was able to make photographs of Angkor Wat in Cambodia and become the first to market views of the ruins.
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Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl and For Your Eyes Only by Ian Fleming
$485
Dahl - Michael Joseph London 1960 (Ist Edition) 8vo, 255pp. Hardcover with price-clipped dustwrapper and minor shelfwear with text in very good condition with a small biro marking on fixed front endpaper. First edition of short stories by the unequalled Roald Dahl. ($285) Fleming - Jonathan Cape London 1960 (Ist Edition) 8vo. Hardcover, price-clipped dustwrapper from a later edition, slightly marked, text in very good condition with small initials on free front endpaper ($485)
Andy Warhol
$495
Brisbane, Queensland Art Gallery, 2007. First, limited, edition Published in conjunction with the Andy Warhol Museum - the first major survey of Warhol's work to be shown in Australia. No. 64 of 1000 copies. Loosely inserted is the stylish programme for the opening party of the exhibition (a concertina in the shape of a Campbells' soup can), the Media Kit for the exhibition (single sheet) and the 2007-8 Calendar for GOMA