Highlights

The initial ‘D’ is formed from an “ouroboros” - a circular symbol that depicts a snake or dragon devouring its own tail, representing the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth. A bar border of Illuminations extends from the initial to the top of the page. Condition: This 770 year old leaf is very good/excellent condition. The script shows no ink loss and the illuminations retain vibrant colours. There is slight darkening of the vellum and a dozen of so small worm holes.

Vysheslavtsev, A.V. Ocherki Perom i Karandashom iz Krugosvetnogo Plavaniya v 1857, 1858, 1859 i 1860 godakh [i.e. Sketches in Pen and Pencil from the Circumnavigation in 1857, 1858, 1859 and 1860]. St. Petersburg-Moscow: M.O. Wolf, 1867.

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)

New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1949. Octavo, original cloth lettered in red and black, a fine copy in near fine red dustwrapper. First American edition. In the four days after Donald Trump's Counselor used the phrase 'alternative facts' to justify her (false) claim that the 2017 inauguration had been watched by the largest audience ever, sales of this Orwell novel surged by 10,000 copies- making it a No. 1 bestseller. Seventy-five years since its first publication, Orwell and his Big Brother, Thought Police, and Ministry of Truth are just as vital.

Part of a collection of Caldecott Prize winner's including rare and first editions.

Author: CARLO DOLCI (signed lower right) Title: “AUSTRALIA E SUOI ABITANTI” [Australia and its Inhabitants] c.1890 Ink, pencil & watercolour on paper. Unusual manuscript map of Australia and Oceania executed by an Italian student in a school context. The chart is showing China, Borneo, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. All places and islands accurately named. Australian continent, named “Nuova Olanda”, includes tracking of Leeuwin land, De Witt land, New South Wales and Van Diemen land as well as main Gulfs, Straits and Capes are accurately named.

The first Jean Crespin, Lyon edition, of Virgil’s works, containing the re-used woodcuts prepared for the Johan Grüninger Strasbourg edition of Virgil, (1502). This edition is rightly acclaimed for its magnificent series of woodcut illustrations by the anonymous Late Master of the Grüninger Workshop.

The scarce and beautifully hand-coloured issue of the expanded second edition, Du Rietz noting that it was "apparently issued in less than 400 copies". The first of 1773 was not issued in a coloured version, nor did it include the double-hemisphere map showing the routes of Cook's three voyages. We trace only seven copies of this coloured issue in commerce in the last 40 years.

August Pollak (1838-1903) A wonderful painting of an "Oriental Woman”, in the guise of Cleopatra wearing the goddess Neckhbet (Vulture) head-dress with a suggestion of a cobra at the brow.  Fine gold earrings and a beautiful necklace adorn her, with the sensuous somewhat fragile beauty of the imagined Cleopatra. Pollack was an Austrian artist, many of his paintings are of still lives, sensuous women or whimsical studies of children with cats, he is known for his oriental subjects. His paintings have about them a Fusilian mystery. The painting could be a study for a larger work.

First edition of one of the landmark works of the English language.

Magnificent large unrecorded etching by John Barclay Godson of the Hippocratic Oath.

Tokyo. Okawa Jokichi. 1895. 56pp. 21.3 x 12.1cm. Good to very good. Covers a bit worn. Some darkening to edges. A few pages with slightly more darkening and one page with some staining. A couple of pages with minor separation at fold but only a couple of cm.