Our latest catalogue contains a comprehensive collection of Australian First World War unit histories, augmented by a selection of related ephemeral publications, many of them rare.
This introduction will be mercifully brief: it seems rather pointless to preach to the converted, and the rest of you have already stopped reading!
Please forgive the eccentric order in which the items are displayed. It is a quirk of our website platform and beyond our control, but you’ll figure it out!
Our regular catalogue, issued in conjunction with the bookplate list, also contains many rare and desirable items. Our copy of Norman Lindsay’s The Scribblings of an Idle Mind (1966, only 350 signed copies) contains two letters from the author detailing the trouble he had finding a publisher; Henry Miller’s Insomnia, or the Devil at Large (1970) is one of only 99 copies, with three signed plates; the run of Walkabout from February 1935 to the late 1950s is in the original wrappers; and there are Bank of South Australia ephemera from 1840-41, as well as 160 promissory notes from the 1860s-70s. Less parochial offerings include Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1799, eighth edition); the 1902 facsimile edition of Shakespeare’s First Folio Edition of 1623; and Phelps’ Art and Artefacts of the Pacific, Africa and the Americas. The James Hooper Collection (1976).
As often, the mixture includes photographs (many of them this time), autographs, trade catalogues, ephemera, cricket memorabilia … and books, of course!
Our regular catalogue of recent acquisitions and items from stock is accompanied this time by a remarkable offering: the retained core collection of bookplate material from the estate of H.B. (Harry) Muir (1909-1992), bookseller, publisher, bookplate collector - indeed, patron of the book arts.
At the heart of this catalogue, and offered as one lot, is the archive of material relating to all 21 bookplates commissioned by, or designed for, Harry Muir. It includes many preparatory drawings, original linoleum blocks and woodblocks, proof prints, and numerous variant examples of the bookplates (many of them signed by the artists). A similar archive, much smaller, but no less attractive, is the one containing the original artwork and linoleum blocks for the beautiful bookplate designed by George Perrottet for Harry's wife Marcie (née Collett).
Association copies of the books on bookplates published by Harry's Wakefield Press, a complete run of the very scarce journal Bookplate (published by The Pear Tree Press, 1920-23), and a collection of 57 bookplates by George Perrottet are offered with numerous other bookplates, including those designed by artists of the calibre of Adrian Feint, John Goodchild, Norman Lindsay, Gayfield Shaw, Eric Thake, and Brett Whiteley.
Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien by Pastor Carl Strehlow, published in seven parts between 1907 and 1920, is a fabled rarity. Our latest catalogue contains the author’s personal set of these volumes, with some 240 corrections in his hand.
But relax! There are plenty of other items to tempt you: many of them also unique, but they won’t require an overdraft. We are still making our way through large collections of Folio Society publications (the deluxe edition of Dante's Paradiso, and sets of volumes by Tolkien, Le Carré, Proust and Conrad are among them), and books on the occult (mainly by or about Aleister Crowley).
Photographs, autographs, trade catalogues, books ranging from art to zoology … the mixture as before!
The last thing any of us needs is yet another invitation to spend money, so although our latest catalogue – much larger than usual – contains many rare, unusual and interesting books, manuscripts, photographs and some maps, we’ll skip the customary self-promotion and let the items sell themselves.
We’ll take this opportunity to thank you for your ongoing interest in what we do: not all old is bad, not all new is good. We wish you all the best as another year passes.
Mick, Sue, Tom, Robert, Harry and David
At the heart of this catalogue is a fine group of limited edition Australian art titles, many with original graphics or drawings, by the likes of Lionel and Norman Lindsay, Jeffrey Smart, John Olsen, Sidney Nolan, James Gleeson, and Lloyd Rees, among others.
But the epitome of limited edition artworks would have to be the unique 1840 manuscript concept plan for a town at Port Gawler, north of Adelaide, proposed in great detail but never realised. The very large format hand-coloured plan was part of an infamous fraudulent property speculation in the early years of the colony of South Australia. Extraordinarily, we are also able to offer beside it an unrecorded printed account of the fraud and ensuing court cases, produced by a successful defendant, the pioneering printer Robert Thomas.
The balance of the list contains a miscellany of rare, unusual and interesting material, including manuscripts, photographs, private press books, literature, history, exploration, and works on Indigenous art.
Our current catalogue contains some superlative material, not least a matching pair of contemporary hand-coloured portrait photographs of the ill-fated explorers Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills. A related rarity is Kirby’s Narrative of a Voyage from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria (1862), an account of the loss of the Firefly, wrecked while carrying stores for one of the expedition search parties. Other strengths include literature and private press material, including the boxed set of Sir John Tenniel's Illustrations to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass, printed in 1988 for the first and only time from the original boxwood blocks engraved by the famous Dalziel Brothers, and limited to a mere 250 sets.
With our latest catalogue, we play to our strengths – or occasionally, merely our predilections! – so you will find Australiana, military history, autographs, photographs, trade catalogues, and illustrated books featured throughout.