We welcome in the new year with some impressive recent acquisitions, not least The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones, the third and best edition of 1868, with 112 chromolithographs. Less colourful, but considerably rarer – we know of no other example – is S.A. Legislative Council, 1868, an album of superb large-format portrait photographs by Townsend Duryea of all eighteen sitting members of the South Australian upper house in the year 1868.

The Catalogue of the Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British Museum is complete in five volumes (1893-1925); our copy of Aaron Arrowsmith’s A Comparative Atlas of Ancient and Modern Geography ... for the Use of Eton School (1828) is fully hand-coloured; Bushman Paintings (1909) contains 54 loose chromocollotypes of rock art of the San peoples of southern Africa; Enid Blyton’s Five on a Treasure Island (1942, third impression), the first title in the famous series, is complete with the first edition dustwrapper … the items on offer are nothing if not eclectic!

Australian voyages include works by Magra, Cook, Forster, Hunter, Collins, Phillip, Tench, Bligh, Barrington, King, Stokes and MacGillivray. Inland exploration includes works by Carron, Sturt, Mitchell, McKinlay, and Warburton, and the four-volume report on the Horn Expedition.

Photographs include the very rare Album by W. Blackwood of Sydney Banks (1859); an 1860s album containing cartes de visite of China, Japan and Melbourne; an 1889 album of 24 photographs by J.W. Lindt, including four of his famous studio tableaux of Indigenous Australians, and four superb plates from his 1885 journey to New Guinea; numerous albums of strong Australasian interest; travel albums featuring Palestine and Samoa; large-format photographs by Frank Hurley of Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914; and The American Monument. Special Edition, one of only 150 copies containing an original signed photograph by Lee Friedlander.

Maps include the first dedicated English map of Australia by Emmanuel Bowen (1744), two by Freycinet (1812), four by John Arrowsmith (South and South-Eastern Australia, 1838 to 1846), and Smith's New General Atlas (1809).

Of the utmost rarity is the substantial run of 111 issues of the Mafeking Mail Special Siege Slip [or Edition], consigned by a descendant of one of families besieged in Mafeking for 217 days between October 1899 and May 1900. 

South Australia Illustrated (1847) by George French Angas is one of the classic Australian colour plate books; Idyllia (1922) is one of only 133 copies with five signed etchings by Norman Lindsay; The Woodblock Painting of Cressida Campbell (2010) needs no introduction …

The catalogue concludes with 35 lots of Gould prints, including the Superb Fairywren and the Antilopine Wallaroo.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

This is an online-only timed auction hosted by Invaluable.com. There will be no in-room bidding for this sale.

Lots will begin to close starting at 2 pm (ACDT) on Monday 9 December 2024.

Buyer's premium: 20%

Online bidding fee: 5%

Click on each lot to see a full description and additional images.

All items are available for viewing at our North Terrace premises. However, for the majority of you who are not Adelaideans and for whom personal inspection is not an option, all items are accurately described and photographed, and are covered by our conditional guarantee.

Please ensure you have read the Auction Details available on the auction page.

If you have any questions, please contact us on (+61) 08 8223 1111 or at treloars@treloars.com

View and bid on Invaluable.com

Picture Book XI plays to our strengths, as ever – literature, art, manuscripts, photographs, militaria, exploration, maps – and there are many highlights.

Our set of The South Polar Times (1907-14, three volumes, two with dustwrappers) has the provenance of Elizabeth Dawson-Lambton (1837-1926), a significant benefactor of Ernest Shackleton and his expeditions. We also have the deluxe large-paper issue of Shackleton’s The Heart of the Antarctic (1909, three volumes), one of only 300 sets with the supplementary volume The Antarctic Book, signed by 16 members of the expedition.

Mawson’s The Home of the Blizzard (Philadelphia, 1915, two volumes, first edition, first state, with dustwrappers) is upstaged by our signed set of the London first edition, second state, purchased while the catalogue was being printed.

Maps include two adjoining gores from Coronelli's influential three-and-a-half-foot globe of the world, showing most of the continent of Australia, titled ‘Het Niew Hollandt | Nuova Hollanda’ (circa 1701). Stanford’s A Map of Australia (1879) is a fine, rare and impressive mammoth-format hand-coloured map on four sheets (approximately 1950 × 2620 mm when assembled) – even rarer and more impressive than Stanford's earlier Library Map of Australasia (1859).

Of the utmost significance is General Sir Harry Chauvel’s personal campaign map for the Battle of Beersheba (31 October 1917), with his annotations (‘better gallop into action’). He also features in the collection of photographs and ephemera relating to the war service of his younger brother Major James Chauvel. Another exceptional group of items is a presentation copy of Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash’s The Australian Victories in France in 1918 (1920), with a signed portrait photograph and a letter written not long before his death in 1931.