Online Catalogue #58

Online Catalogue #58

Our latest catalogue includes two very rare items that are parochial in the extreme, but by nature of universal appeal to collectors. The album of photographs by Freeman & Wivell, prepared for the 1876 Philadelphia Exhibition, contains 20 large-format stark and monumental ‘architectural portraits’ of the city of Adelaide. The mammoth hand-coloured wall map of the settled portions of South Australia, prepared by Sanders & Packard, Surveyors, in early 1886, appears to be unique.

Among other important items of literature are first editions of Katherine Mansfield’s first book, In a German Pension (1911); the third and fifth volumes of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia series, as well as his Till We Have Faces (1956); and T.S. Eliot’s Animula (1929, one of only 400 copies of the signed large-paper edition). The signed deluxe edition of Gifford Chapman’s Kangaroo Island classic, Wooden Fishing Boats (1998) is arguably rarer than Fenner's much earlier Pocket Atlas of Modern & Ancient Geography (1828, with 79 hand-coloured maps), but horses for courses …

Less rarified, but no less interesting and definitely as eclectic, items include numerous volumes in the Legal Classics Library series; a selection of Bluey and Curley annuals; assorted trade catalogues and other printed ephemera; and a handsome gold medallion awarded to Joseph Watson, a member of the Port Adelaide Football Club’s team declared ‘Champions of Australia’ in 1913.

Down tools or drinks for twenty minutes and enjoy the catalogue!