Highlights

Canberra: AGPS Press - Australian Government Publishing Service, 1988-1991. First Editions. 3 vols.. 4to. original blue boards gilt (a trifle rubbed & marked) in dustwrappers (a little rubbed & nicked, slight crease to spine vol. 1). A near fine copy of an uncommon set, detailing the history of Canberra from 1820 to 1980

A superb Sydney Harbour scene, sweeping from Elizabeth Bay House in the middle-ground around to the lower north shore, showcasing Martens’s remarkable talent at capturing the shimmering waters and the intense light of the city.

EILEEN MAYO (1906-1994) c. 1959 Colour Process Lithograph Original poster promoting the Great Barrier Reef as a tourist destination, showing three black striped cream fish with yellow fins swimming amongst two types of coral, one red the other cream brown. One fish is central and oversized. Includes a sea snail. 775mm x 605mm Held in the National Gallery of Australia.

The pioneering work of ethnomycology by R. Gordon Wasson (1898-1986), banker turned mushroom head, and his wife, Russian-American pediatrician Valentina Pavlovna Wasson (1901-1958). Together they were largely responsible for turning on a western audience to psychedelic mushrooms following telling their story in Life and This Week magazines in the same year as publishing this work.

As it was read in the House of Commons, and attested under the hand of Phelps, Clerk to that Infamous Court. Taken by John Nalson, LLD. Jan 4, 1683. Lond. By H.C. for Thomas Dring. 1684. Sm.folio. Old full leather (rebacked) viii,70,ii,134,ipp. Engraved frontispiece plate, portrait of the King and a view of the interior of the court. Some browning else a Very Good copy. Scarce. Many marginal notes on the persons involved, the endpapers filled with relevant anecdotes and an index, all in contemporary or early 18th century hands. "The only day-to-day account we have of what went on."

Uemura, Masurō. Takamizawa Mokuhansha. Tokyo. Showa 12 (1937). A collection of one hundred delicately reproduced Japanese ukiyo-e prints and includes works by Sharaku, Utamaro, Eisen, Hiroshige, Hokusai and others.

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.

Playne, Somerset. The Foreign and Colonial Compiling and Publishing Co. London & New York. 1917. One of a series of publications published with the object of supplying the British public with a picture - complete as far as literary and pictorial effort could make it - of the several different parts of the Empire.

Confucius. Andreas Cramoisy for Danielem Horthemels. Paris. 1867. The first and most influential translation to be widely available in the West of the works of Confucius, with a wonderful full-page engraved portrait of him labelled the "foremost teacher under heaven".

A Near Fine copy of Elizabeth David's second book with a fine unblemished dust jacket.

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.

First edition of the earliest published account of Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific: the rare first issue, with the leaf of dedication to ‘The Right Honourable Lords of the Admiralty, and to Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander’ inserted by the publishers to add authenticity. This was the first of a series of so-called “surreptitious accounts” of Cook’s various voyages to appear in print: the Admiralty found it practically impossible to enforce their ruling that no unofficial publications should pre-empt the official and lengthier accounts of the voyages, naturally much slower in the press.