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.

Practical Observations on Insanity
$3000
Cox was one of the first medical graduates to specialise in the treatment of the insane. Throughout his career he advocated for more humane treatment of lunatics and maniacs. In this work he introduces his swinging technique, based on a design by Erasmus Darwin, of spinning a patient’s body round a vertical axis in a specially designed chair which would produce nausea, vomiting, and convulsions, but would ultimately lead to a restful slumber, which he believed to be a positive outcome for the maniacal. This copy warmly inscribed by Cox.
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Rackham, Arthur [Charles Dickens]. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
$10000
[Signed Deluxe Edition]. ill. Arthur Rackham. London: William Heinemann, 1915. First (Deluxe). 4to. original decorated full vellum gilt, teg, rest uncut (some toning and spotting, lacks silk ties, tiny chip at headcap, else clean & bright throughout); pp. xvi (last blank)], 148 (last colophon), with frontispiece and 11 other colour tipped-in plates (tissue-guarded) + black and white drawings in text. A very good copy. No. 369 of a limited edition of 525 copies signed by the artist. 'Arthur Rackham'.
MASON, Major George Henry (attributed). THE PUNISHMENTS OF CHINA, Illustrated by Twenty-two Engravings with Explanations in English and French.
$1450
London, printed for William Miller by S. Gosnell, 1808 [later issue]. Folio, with 22 fine handcoloured stipple engraved plates by J. Dadley, bound with new endpapers in early straight grain morocco, the boards within elaborate embossed and gilt frames, the backstrip preserving remnants of the original lettering, all edges gilt. As often, this is a later issue with some plates watermarked in 1817. Mason's time as a British army officer in Canton in 1789 gave him the opportunity to illustrate local customs and costumes, and he also provided the text for each plate. See Abbey Travel, 532.
C1532 (1540) Nova, et Integra Universi Orbis Descriptio.
$50000
Oronce Fine's famous double cordiform map of the world is acknowledged as being one of the most striking and influential world maps published in the c.16th. The present example is state 4 of the map identified by the inclusion of the date M.D. XL (1540) in Roman numerals within the lower panel. In all there are 6 states of the map, dated 1532, 1536, 1540, 1541 and 1555. All states are rare and as noted by Shirley, most examples are trimmed, making this example especially desirable.
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Hayek, F. A. [Friedrich August von]. The Road to Serfdom.
$25000
London: George Routledge & Sons, 1944. First Edition. 8vo. original cloth gilt in duswrapper; pp. viii, 184. A very good copy. Inspired by the writings of the 19th-century French classical thinker Alexis de Tocqueville on the "road to servitude". Hayek "[warns] of the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning". A highly influential book amongst post-war conservative thinkers. Initially produced in a small print run, leading Hayek himself to describe it as "that unobtainable book".