Highlights
Each year our exhibitors bring extraordinarily rare, beautiful and unusual items for sale.
Here is a selection of the items offered in 2025 by our exhibitors. These may still be available for purchase. If interested, contact the respective exhibitor directlyCloser to the 2026 Fair, new highlights of what will be on offer in 2026 will be posted. Bookmark this page and visit again to see the 2026 highlights.
CHURCHILL (Winston S.) The Second World War: The Gathering Storm; The Finest Hour; The Grand Alliance; The Hinge of Fate; Closing the Ring; Triumph and Tragedy.
$30750
First editions, first printings. Six volumes. Numerous maps and diagrams, some folding and others full-page, throughout each volume. 8vo. Original black cloth, spines lettered in gilt, top edges in red, supplied dust jackets. London, Cassell & Co. Ltd. 1948-1954.
Inscribed to Grace Hamblin, "the longest-serving member of Churchill’s secretarial staff."
![雙六式國史早わかり. [Sugoroku - Quick View of Japan's History].](https://rarebookfair.com/assets/catalogues/books@asiabookroom.com/216826_01.jpg)
雙六式國史早わかり. [Sugoroku - Quick View of Japan's History].
$650
Large colour folding sugoroku game, 93 x 125cm.
This unique and visually rich sugoroku-style educational chart was published in 1927 in Shizuoka by Yamamura Azusa. Intending to present Japanese history through the lens of the imperial lineage, Yamamura sought to make the subject accessible and engaging for children by structuring it as a game. Using the familiar sugoroku board format, he transforms historical chronology into a path of progress, starting with the mythological creation of Japan by the sun goddess Amaterasu at the centre of the chart.
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First World War recruitment leaflet distributed by aeroplane
$550
'If YOU were Hit by a Bomb from an Enemy Aeroplane you would Realise that we are at War!'
Adelaide, printed by 'Advertiser' Print for J. Newland, State Recruiting Committee, 27 October 1917.
Robert Graham Carey, manager of the Ballarat Flying School, dropped this leaflet over Adelaide from his 60hp Bleriot monoplane in October 1917.
DOUGLAS, William Bloomfield. Diary kept while captain of a mail ship, commander of a government coastal survey, and government resident of the Northern Territory.
$104500
The valuable journal of the overly ambitious and power-hungry Captain Bloomfield Douglas, encompassing three important aspects of Australian colonial history: the evolution of the colony’s communications with the wider world, the quest to survey its coasts accurately, and the placing of control over colonized fringes in the hands of ill-suited soldiers of fortune.
![中華書局印刷樣本. [Chung Hwa Book Company Printing Samples Book].](https://rarebookfair.com/assets/catalogues/books@asiabookroom.com/china_highres-5.jpg)
中華書局印刷樣本. [Chung Hwa Book Company Printing Samples Book].
$1500
Delightful sample catalogue from Chung Hwa Book Co. in Shanghai with 38 unpaginated leaves including introduction, awards, and samples demonstrating the types of printing and printed illustrations carried out by this printing company. Chinese card binding with silk ties, 21 x 28.4cm. Presented in blue cloth-covered case with toggles, 29.8 x 21.4cm. The first 2 leaves include the company's logo and a foreword introducing the company and its expansion in just a few short years, up until Minguo 5. Following this there are 7 pages of photographic illustrations of awards received by the company.
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John Harris, Navigantium atque itinerantium bibliotheca: or, A Complete Collection of Voyages and Travels. Consisting of above six hundred of the most authentic writers.
$17000
London, T. Woodward, et al., 1744 - 1748. Two volumes, thick folio, titles in black & red, complete with 61 maps, charts, and plates.
The second edition of Harris's great collection of travels, preferred for its new maps prepared by Emmanuel Bowen. The most notable is Bowen's version of the Thévenot Tasman map, "A Complete Map of the Southern Continent surveyed by Capt. Abel Tasman". This is the first English map of Australia (and the first map of Australia since Thévenot in 1663).
The avi-fauna of Australia : comprising Gould’s Birds of Australia and all other birds discovered in the Australian colonies since 1850
$35000
[Sydney?] : [G.J. Broinowski?], 1897. One of the rarest publications on Australian ornithology, one of only two known copies, the only one in private hands.
In addition to its obvious desirability as an Australian colour plate book of almost unprocurable rarity, The avi-fauna of Australia is also meaningful insight into the debt Broinowski felt to Gould, and the respect he afforded the scientific community who contributed to our collective understanding of Australian ornithology.
Provenance:
Quentin Keynes (1921 – 2003), explorer, filmmaker, and great-grandson of Charles Darwin.
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City of Brisbane, Queensland.
$4750
Very rare, large c.19th hand coloured panorama of Brisbane depicting the wharves at Petrie’s Bight, from a vantage point near All Hallows School, by Albert Henry Fullwood (1863-1930).
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Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Bolderwood (sic)
$3900
Robbery Under Arms
By Rolf Bolderwood (sic)
The rare first edition.
3 vols. London. 1888.
Robbery Under Arms
By Rolf Bolderwood (sic)
The rare first edition.
3 vols. London. 1888.
Nicholas II: TSAR NICHOLAS II SIGNED DOCUMENT.
$5000
TSAR NICHOLAS II SIGNED DOCUMENT IN RUSSIAN, APPOINTING ALEXEI NIKOLAEVICH KUROPATKIN A KNIGHT OF THE IMPERIAL ORDER OF ST. VLADIMIR, APOSTLE AND PRINCE 1ST CLASS. Single sheet folded to form 4 small quarto pages; copperplate, with autograph subscription 'in gratitude Nicholas'; dated 8 August, [St. Petersburg], 1916. *The document details Kuropatkin's fifty years of distinguished service.
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Doug Scott, The Ogre
$250
Scott, Doug. The Ogre. Biography of a mountain and the dramatic story of the first ascent. 1st edition. 2017. Sheffield: Vertebrate Publishing.
8vo. Original pictorial boards in dustjacket; pp. xiv, 178, with illustrations. Signed by the author. A fine copy. A full account of the first ascent of ‘The Ogre’ (Baintha Brakk), a notoriously difficult mountain in the Karakoram, by a British team in 1977, known for the absolutely epic descent by the two summit climbers, Doug Scott and Chris Bonington. This was the last of Doug‘s books to be published in his lifetime.
Metabolism in Architecture
$350
Details the 1960s Japanese architectural movement which envisioned cities as evolving organisms. Led by Tange, Kurokawa, Kikutake, and Maki, it championed modular, adaptable, and sustainable designs.
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‘INCUNABLE’ OF COMIC PRINTING IN YOKOHAMA. WIRGMAN (Charles), editor. Japan Punch.
$13500
First edition. 42 issues. Lithograph illustrations throughout. Folio. Original flexible boards Light creasing and occasional water-staining. A few marginal pencil annotations in a contemporary hand. Yokohama, R. Meiklejohn, 1876-1880.
Christina, the Maid of the South Seas; a Poem.
$4000
MITFORD, Mary Russell .
London: Printed by A. J. Valpy for F. C. and J. Rivington, 1811. First Edition.
Mary Russell Mitford's (1787-1855) second published title.A metrical tale based on the first news of discovery of the last surviving mutineer of the H. M. S. Bounty and a generation of British-Tahitian children on Pitcairn Island in 1811. As a manuscript, the work was apparently read and corrected by James Burney who sailed with Captain James Cook and the proofs were corrected by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A scarce item.
Moby Dick
$39000
Melville, Herman.
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.
1st edition. 1851. New York: Harper & Brothers. Cochran copy, ex-Fisk Memorial Library, Natchez, Mississippi.12mo. Original brown cloth gilt, publisher’s circular blindstamp upper board in bespoke clamshell case; pp. xxiv (last blank), 636 (last blank), [6 publisher’s catalogue)]. [Tanselle 2]
Despite initial unfavourable criticism, there is good reason why Moby Dick often makes lists of the top ten books ever written. It contains the best exposition of Melville’s philosophical musings, every sentence loaded with import.
Thunderball | Ian Fleming
$2100
First Edition, First Impression of the ninth book in the James Bond series, or the first in the Blofeld trilogy, is excellent for the ardent Bond followers in such a good state.
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Phantastica: Die Betaubenden und Erregenden Genussmittel
$800
First edition of the psychedelic classic by German pharmacologist Louis Lewin (1850-1929). Set the standard for the classification of psychoactive drugs: Inebriantia (Inebriants such as alcohol or ether), Excitantia (Stimulants such as Khat or Amphetamine), Euphorica (Euphoriants and Narcotics such as Heroin), Hypnotica (Tranquilizers such as Kava), Phantastica (Hallucinogens or Entheogens such as Peyote or Ayahuasca). Later translated into French, Italian, and English, the 1931 English edition said to be Aldous Huxley’s introduction to drug literature.
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ZLATA' PRAHA, Viktor Oliva, Czech painter and illustrator.
$750
VIKTOR OLIVA
(Nové Stašecì, [Bohemia] 1861- Prague 1928)
Czech painter and illustrator
“ZLATA' PRAHA” c.1894
LITHOGRAPHY
Original colour lithograph advertising “Zlata' Praha” (Golden Prague), a Czech illustrated literary magazine founded by poet Vítězslav Hálek, published between 1864 to 1929.
An elegant woman dressed in red in a golden frame, wearing an eccentric hat and walking with a copy of "Zlata' Praha" under her left arm.
Published by Imprimerie Chaix (Atelier Chéret), Paris.
NOTE: Original colour lithograph printed on "Arches" paper.Blank at verso; before stamps (before publication)
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An Austen family copy of the first edition in beautiful Regency binding. AUSTEN (Jane). Emma.
$100000
First edition. Three volumes. 12mo. Contemporary tree calf, single-rule gilt border, flat spines elaborately panelled in gilt. London, John Murray. 1816.
From the library of Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen (1829-1893), Jane Austen’s grand-nephew. It is uncommon to find Jane Austen titles in contemporary bindings and even more so with such intimate provenance.
Barret (Robert) THE THEORIKE AND PRACTIKE OF MODERNE WARRES.
$15000
Discoursed in Dialogue wise. Printed for William Ponsonby, London, 1598. *'A compilation from foreign writers. It is said that Shakespeare in the passage "The gallant militarist that had the whole theoric of war in the knot of his scarf, and the practice in the chaps of his dagger" (All's Well That Ends Well, act iv, scene iii), was alluding to this book' [Cockle, page 57]. The table of 'forrain words' at the end is effectively the first English glossary of military terminology preceding the anonymously published Military Dictionary of 1702.
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Pedro Fernández de Quirós: Manuscript memorial to Philip III of Spain.
$800000
A radical abolitionist in the age of Shakespeare: original Quiròs manuscript memorial arguing against the Black slave trade. [Madrid, possibly before September 1611]. An exceptional document in the history of Portuguese colonization of South America, and one of the greatest rarities in the field of voyages and exploration: an original manuscript petition, not recorded in any other copy, written to the King of Spain by the Portuguese-Spanish seafarer and discoverer Pedro Fernández de Quirós (Queirós), proposing to settle the "Austral lands" for the Spanish crown.
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Crown Lands of Australia - Inscribed
$500
Well-bound copy of Campbell's Crown Lands of Australia with inscription from the author to the previous owners, The Geelong Mechanic's Institure.
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THE SECOND ENGLISH MIDWIFERY MANUAL. GUILLEMEAU (Jacques). Child-Birth or, the Happy Deliverie of Women.
$31000
First edition in English. Small 4to. 17 woodcut illustrations in the text. Contemporary limp vellum, title (twice) in early manuscript to the spine. London, by A. Hatfield, 1612.
A very fine copy in contemporary vellum of one of the earliest English midwifery manuals.
