Catalogues

Melbourne Rare Book Fair 2023

Melbourne Rare Book Fair 2023

The centrepiece of the material we have for sale at the forthcoming Melbourne Rare Book Fair is a selection of unique items relating to Australian inland exploration. One exceptional item is an unrecorded manuscript journal of the first seven weeks of John McDouall Stuart’s second exploring expedition, with a lengthy addendum in the hand of the explorer himself. An extensive archive relating to the pastoral properties of Alfred Barker (1812-1880) in the north of South Australia includes a series of letters giving details of the controversial purchase of Stuart’s pastoral runs on the eve of his departure from Australia. Rare portraits include vintage photographs of Stuart, Burke, Wills, and Allan Davidson, and a lithograph of Edward John Eyre.

Children’s literature is well-represented by a superb collection of books by A.A. Milne and his illustrator Ernest H. Shepard, including deluxe and limited editions, some of them signed. Once again, we have a fine selection of private press material, including titles from the Doves, Eragny, Golden Cockerel, Vale and Cuala presses. One highlight is the complete run of twelve issues of A Broadside, New Series, 1937, a hand-coloured collection of ‘New Irish and English Songs’ edited by William Butler Yeats.

Artwork and photography include a suite of five colonial watercolours by S.T. Gill, and two large-format vintage photographs by Frank Hurley from Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914, with provenance from a member of his later BANZARE.

Catalogue 72

Catalogue 72

Some unique items in our current catalogue include a portrait photograph of the ‘erratic, histrionic genius’ Professor Archibald Watson, signed with a more than friendly inscription to the recently widowed Mrs Charles Rasp; Sir John Downer’s copy of a Draft of a Bill to constitute the Commonwealth of Australia (1891), with some annotations; an informal group portrait of the Governors of each of the Australian colonies, along with the Governors of Fiji and New Zealand, at the South Pacific Defence Conference in Sydney in 1888; and a copy of the very rare Secondary Towns Association, formed for the purchasing of One or More Special Survey or Surveys of Land in South Australia (1843), with numerous annotations and additional manuscript material relating to one family's early land speculations in SA and NZ.

Rarities jostle with curiosities: the graphic poster for the Austral-Brindisi subdivision near Adelaide’s Outer Harbour in 1911 lines up against one for the VI Seminario Interamericano de Rayos Cosmicos in La Paz in 1970 … that's enough, you get the drift, and there are 236 items to check out!

Catalogue 71

Catalogue 71

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!

Catalogue 70

Catalogue 70

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!

Catalogue 69

Catalogue 69

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.

Catalogue 68

Catalogue 68

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!

Catalogue 67

Catalogue 67

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

Catalogue 66

Catalogue 66

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.