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.

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.
FREYCINET, Louis de. Reflections on New South Wales 1788-1839.
$2750
Hordern House: Sydney, 2001. Translated by Thomas Cullity, assisted by Katherine Pratt, and Jean and Bernice Pasquier. Special issue: #28 of 28 copies, printed on large paper and bound in quarter vellum and olive green glazed linen by Newbold and Collins. (The standard edition was itself limited to 300 copies and quickly sold out.) Large 4to. xxii, 670pp, with a portrait, twenty maps and illustrations and eight colour plates. A fine clean copy, still with the publisher's plain paper wrapper. ***Freycinet's examination of the history and progress of the colony during its first 52 years.
WILSON, Hardy. Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania.
$1500
Published by the Author: Sydney, 1924. #208 of 1000 copies, signed by Hardy Wilson. Large folio. [vi], 10, IV, 50 tipped-in collotype plates, with titled tissue guards. Original quarter parchment and batik boards, gilt titles and bat device on the upper (without the dustwrapper, as usual). The spine is rubbed along the joints, which are just starting to split a little at the head and tail, the spine itself a little discoloured and with some slight damp-marking; the edges of the boards slightly rubbed. The volume is now protected by a new mylar wrapper. Internally in very nice clean condition.
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Peg Maltby: "Playing in the Snow" (original watercolour)
$2450
Vibrant watercolour by British Australian illustrator, Peg Maltby (1899 - 1984). Peg Maltby, née Agnes Newberry Orchard, worked in England as an illustrator of chocolate-box lids before emigrating to Melbourne where she became a member of the Victorian Artists' Society holding successful exhibitions of her watercolours in the 1930s and 1940s. Maltby rose to fame with the publication of 'Peg's Fairy Book', published by Muffetts in 1944 and selling over 180,000 copies in five editions. Note the rare inclusion of a native koala in the composition.
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