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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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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Handbook of Australian Fungi
$1500
The first monograph on Australian fungi by English botanist and mycologist Mordecai Cubitt Cooke (1825-1914). Containing descriptions of 2079 species of macrofungi, microfungi, and slime moulds (or myxomycetes), of which 377 figures are illustrated across 36 plates.
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Zoological sketches.Made for the Zoological society of London, from animals in their vivarium, in the Regent’s park.
$48500
London : Henry Graves and Company, Printsellers to Her Majesty, 1861 [actually 1856] - 67. Two volumes with 100 fine lithographed plates by Joseph Wolf. Zoological sketches is unequivocally one of the high points of nineteenth-century natural history illustration. The work features numerous Australian birds and animals. "WITHOUT EXCEPTION, THE BEST ALL-ROUND ANIMAL PAINTER THAT EVER LIVED" (Sir Edwin Landseer).
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