To coincide with the Melbourne Rare Book Fair we are pleased to announce the latest in our series of Picture Book catalogues. It contains many treasures:

• • accounts of voyages by Magra, Bligh, MacGillivray and Flinders (the rare large-paper issue, a gift from the explorer's only child, with the elephant folio atlas);
• • accounts of inland expeditions by Hume, Blaxland, Carron, Jardine, Leichhardt and Cross (the first work relating to the exploration of Western Australia);the extremely rare second impression of Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937, with the dustwrapper), the first edition of J.M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy (1911, with the dustwrapper), and P.G. Wodehouse's Mike (1919, also with the dustwrapper!);
• • autograph material from Hector Berlioz, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Sir Robert Torrens and Sir Douglas Mawson;
• • numerous important photographs, including an Antarctic masthead panorama by Frank Hurley, an early experimental image from a negative produced by exposure to radioactivity, and portraits (many with signatures) of the founders of Darwin;
• • and an apparently unrecorded large-scale map of the failed Ottoman attempt to invade Egypt on 3 February 1915, the first action in the First World War to include the AIF, prepared by the 3rd Field Company, Australian Engineers, the only Australian unit present.

To view these items (and much besides) visit us at Stand 24 at the Melbourne Rare Book Fair, 12–14 July.

Our latest offering features an important collection relating to the early exploration of the Northern Territory, compiled by William Webster Hoare (1841-1927), surgeon's assistant and dispenser on George Goyder's survey expedition of 1868-9.

The balance of the catalogue is an eclectic assortment of militaria, bookplates, photography, art, aviation, vintage Australian tourist guides and more.

Happy browsing!

New Year’s greetings, and welcome to our first retail catalogue for 2019. It is an interesting miscellany representative of just some of our many interests – in this case these include art, autographs, literature, photographs, travel and exploration. Recent acquisitions include rare Lawrence of Arabia ephemera, Somerset de Chair’s The First Crusade (Golden Cockerel Press, one of 100 copies), and Idriess’s The Cattle King (1936, a fine first edition with the dustwrapper).

Photographs include the first one taken of Robert O’Hara Burke’s burial tree, a framed pair of images of the Smith brothers’ Vickers Vimy in Adelaide in March 1920, a very unusual group portrait of Oswald Mosley and his first wife’s family, and fine portraits of Don Bradman and George Fife Angas.

Welcome to our latest catalogue and our revamped website. The ease with which you will be able to navigate your way around it belies (but more than justifies) the time and effort spent on the project.

However, if you remain cartographically challenged, read on. We can offer you a copy of the very rare atlas, Goyder’s Plan of the Southern Portion of the Province of South Australia (1877), and a presumably much rarer linen handkerchief map highlighting the Dardanelles in 1914. We have J.M. Black’s complete set of Brown’s Forest Flora of South Australia (1882-90), with 45 superb chromolithographs. There are eight photobooks by Bird, Everard, Green and Haskins; a vintage photograph of three-times Australian prime minister, Alfred Deakin and his wife; and a very large-format photograph taken at the farewell banquet in London in October 1900 to The Earl of Hopetoun, the first Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia.

There are rare and desirable cricket cartoon books by Branson, Glover and Mailey; fine first editions of Idriess’s The Desert Column (1932, with the dustwrapper) and Gold-Dust and Ashes (1933, one of only 200 of the signed deluxe version); Kaleski’s Australian Barkers and Biters (1914, in the original pictorial wrappers) … in short, the tempting eclectic mixture as before!