Highlights
Each year our Exhibitors have wonderful items for sale. This year is no exception.
Our Exhibitors will be adding their highlights here over the next six weeks leading up to the Fair.
Check back soon to see what will be coming to the Fair.
[SYDNEY] Presentation photograph album of views of Manly, New South Wales, presented to pioneer resident and long-serving mayor of the municipality, Charles Hayes, in 1907.
$5000
A unique presentation album of Manly views, associated with the most significant public figure in the early colonial history of this Northern Beaches municipality, Charles Hayes (1841-1924).
Elaborate watercolour decorations and views of Manly (harbour side) and Charles Hayes’ Manly residence; followed by 25 sepia-tone gelatin silver prints individually mounted on the rectos of leaves, each with floral border decoration in watercolour.
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A walk in Sydney streets on the shady side (with 20 lithographed illustrations)
$4200
Sydney : Nelson P. Whitelocke, [1885]. Privately published in Sydney in 1885, this rare and highly evocative graphic work documents – with the empathetic eye of an artist possessing a strong social conscience – the city’s poor and working-class types, as well as the appearance (and sounds) of its streets.
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[FIRST FLEET] A convict awaiting transportation to Botany Bay writes to Lord Sydney, Secretary of State, in an attempt to have his sentence commuted. Newgate Prison, 9 May 1787.
$12000
A rare example of a First Fleet convict letter.
Manuscript letter in ink on laid paper, one page quarto, with a conjugate leaf with address panel and red wax seal; dated at ‘Newgate, 9th May 1787’, signed ‘Thos. Baker’, and addressed to ‘Right Honble. Lord Sydney, Secretary of State’; the letter is written in a fine hand, apparently by a scrivener on the prisoner’s behalf (see below); old folds, conjugate leaf with small marginal loss where the seal was broken; a very well preserved document.
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An early copy of a letter by James Cook to John Walker of Whitby, reporting on Cook’s first voyage.
$45000
Stockton : Joshua Reeve, December 16, 1774. Manuscript, 3½ pages, [2] sheets, foolscap (260 x 230 mm), written in ink in a uniform, copperplate cursive; old folds (now fragile, one expertly repaired), each sheet with a few small perforations (not affecting legibility), some roughening to the edges and scattered spotting; signed at the foot Joshua Reeve scrpt. Stockton, Decemr. 16 1774.
A very early copy of an important, informative letter by James Cook, which contains Cook’s impressions of the indigenous people of New Holland.
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The Bouquet of Sydney
$4500
Hamburg : C. Adler, before 1868. Chromolithographed and engraved folding card in the shape of a bouquet of flowers, housed in the original gilt-printed envelope with a lithographed view of Sydney, lettered in gold, the view measuring 520 x 118 mm, the envelope 86 x 142 mm, a fine example.
Adler’s Bouquet of Sydney, a highly ephemeral piece, the charming envelope bearing a view of Sydney from the North Shore, housing the fragile and rare diecut souvenir with 26 engraved views of Sydney.
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[COOK] Newton’s new & improved terrestrial pocket globe 1817
$17500
London : John Newton, 1st January 1817. Terrestrial pocket globe, 3 inches in diameter, engraved gores with original hand colour over papier-mâché and plaster sphere, in the original publisher’s shagreen case, titled Newton’s improved pocket celestial globe. A rare and attractive miniature pocket globe showing Cook’s third voyage.
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On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (fourth edition)
$12500
London : printed by W. Closes and Sons for John Murray, 1866. Fourth edition. Octavo, original green cloth, boards blocked in blind, spine gilt (light bumping to corners, very minor stains), green endpapers, contemporary owner’s inscription in pencil ‘M Purser 1867’ to half-title, pp. xxi; [blank], 593; [blank] 32 (publisher’s catalogue dated January 1865), folding lithographic plate by William West after Darwin, one quire slightly sprung, a fine copy of the fourth edition, entirely unsophisticated, crisp, complete and unrestored.
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A Tale of Two Cities
$10000
DICKENS, Charles
A Tale of Two Cities; With illustrations by H.K. Browne
London: Chapman and Hall, 1859. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo : pp. (6) viii (1, list of plates) (1, blank) (1) 2-254 : 16 plates by H.K. Browne (Phiz) including frontis and vignette title : pale green e.p.s : half leather over marbled boards : five raised bands and gilt lettering to spine.
Slight rubbing to boards; plates with occasional closed tears to edges, not affecting images; historical expert cleaning to some leaves; contemporary ownership signature. An exceptionally clean copy, handsomely bound.
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