Highlights

London : Henry H. Bohn, 1838. A fine example, in original condition, of one of the rarest illustrated works of Australian natural history.

London : Boydell & Co., 1808. First edition (later issue, as usually found). The plates illustrate romanticised depictions of the landscape and inhabitants encountered on the voyage, including depictions of what is modern-day New Zealand, Tonga, Tahiti and French Polynesia, Indonesia, Macao, Vietnam and Russia. It is considered one of the great colour plate books of the nineteenth century, Davidson writes that 'these views should be added to a collection but they are so seldom available that a collector would be fortunate to obtain a copy'.

The first edition of the ever mysterious Codex Seraphinianus by Italian artist Luigi Serafini (1949-). Possibly an illustrated encyclopaedia of an alternate universe, Serafini has alluded that it is perhaps all just the thoughts of a cat passed through his hand. The Codex is written in an imaginary language and illustrated phantasmagorically throughout. This being the true first edition published in 2 volumes by Italian art publisher Franco Maria Ricci.

A very fine and attractively bound copy of the first and only edition of one of Hooker's rarest and most beautifully illustrated works; an important work, it includes specimens from Australia described by Robert Brown, colonial botanist Charles Fraser, and Allan Cunningham. A particularly notable inclusion is the Banksia verticillata (no. 96) from western Australia, first noticed at King George Sound by Archibald Menzies on the Vancouver voyage “and brought by him to our gardens in 1794”; this banksia, now considered vulnerable, was later codified by Robert Brown when he returned to the region

CARTIER-BRESSON, Henri, & Jean Miro. The Europeans. New York/Paris, Simon & Schuster/Verve, 1955. First US edition: 114 full page photographs; folio, illustrated boards designed by Miro. Front spine cracked, with a one cm. chip at top, but a very good copy. With the separate pamphlet of captions laid in.

Edited by Clement Shorter / Arranged and collated, with Bibliography and Notes by C.W. Hatfield. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923. First Complete Edition. Octavo : pp. xxiv, 196 : illustrated with four plates : hand-bound in half dark blue oasis morocco over cloth boards : lettered in gilt to spine : five raised bands : sen headbands : top edge gilt : all other edges trimmed. Fine. (Bookseller inventory #2807)

A fine portrait of a distinguished administrator whose political and social legacies were of immense importance in the shaping of the Colony of New South Wales. Portraits of such significant early Australian figures are of the utmost rarity. [Attributed to Nathaniel Plimer, probably 1803-1804]. Portrait on ivory, in its original nine-carat gold mount, 70 x 53 mm; verso of mount engraved ‘Lieutt Coll Thoms Brisbane’; the sitter is portrayed with his hair powdered and wearing a white shirt, scarlet coat with gold epaulettes and black stock.

Facsimile Editions of Early English Children's Books from The Osborne Collection, Toronto Public Library. ( 35 Volumes in 28 slipcases with the Descriptive Companion volume edited by Margaret Crawford Maloney also in a slipcase). Tokyo/London; Holp Shuppan, Publishers. The Bodley Head; 1982- 83. Facsimile Editions; various sizes; each volume in fine condition together with its printed slipcase, complete set still in original printed box of issue. .

Colourful folding sugoroku, 56 x 76 cm, tiny nick lower margin, a very good copy. A sugoroku game created for New Year 1935 and published by the children's magazine Yonen Kurabu. This is an example of the 'self-improvement' genre of sugoroku, where the images in the game provide moral instruction about the importance of improving one's lot in life and contributing to the nation. Each square in the game depicts a person who (we are told) started from humble beginnings but, though dedication and hard work, achieved personal success and contributed to the wellbeing of society.

Prima secu(n)de p(ar)tis summe theologie eximij doctoris Tome de Aquino. [Nuremberg, per Anthonium Kroberger, 1496.] Section 2 of the first part of the Summa. Numerous initials in red. First page with gold initial and coloured decorations. Written by St Thomas Aquinas(1265-1274), considerd to be the greatest theologian in the history of the Catholic Church and still read today. Its in very good condition. The binding is old with thin boards which are worn.

WALTON, Izaak. THE COMPLEAT ANGLER. Illustrated with 54 gravures by Peter Henry Emerson and George Blankhart, and about 100 woodcuts laid in on India paper. 2 vols. Folio. London. Sampson Low &c. 1888. #244 of 250 copies of the Edition de Luxe. Publisher’s ¾ moroccco with cloth sides bearing the Walton-Cotton cipher in gilt on the front boards. Fine. Rare. One of the most celebrated of photographically illustrated books.

Paris : Hachette, 1918. First edition. Small octavo, [x], 224, [4] pp., contemporary gilt lettered quarter green cloth. An attractive copy. Originally published under the nom de guerre ‘Lieutenant Marc’ in 1918, the real author was identified in the 1970's as Jean Beraud Villars. This book was so critical of the French military and aircraft manufacturers (who he alleged supplied inferior aircraft) that Villars could not publish it under his own name. This is the censored and redacted French first edition.