Hordern House Rare Books
Member of ANZAAB - Australia
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Art: Colonial
Manuscripts
Natural History
Pacific
Voyages & Exploration
Voyages to Australia
Hordern House, founded by Anne McCormick and Derek McDonnell in 1985 and named for our original building in Sydney's Potts Point, is an internationally renowned dealership, specialising in rare books, manuscripts and paintings. Always reflected in our extensive stock of rare and select material is our specialization in voyages and travels (with a special interest in the Pacific & Australia), natural history and colour-plate material, paintings and voyage art, historical maps and manuscripts. We issue regular catalogues, some of which are published online only: all our recent catalogues can be viewed at hordern.com
Highlights
Elizabeth Bay and Sydney painted from Mrs Darling’s Point Road
$68750
A superb Sydney Harbour watercolour c. 1845 by Conrad Martens, 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.
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Written from the Sirius, flagship of the First Fleet, 10 May, 1787
$165000
A wonderful original letter by Newton Fowell, the eighteen-year-old midshipman on HMS Sirius whose moving and evocative letters from the First Fleet have been one of the treasures of the State Library of New South Wales since they were acquired in 1987. This candid letter to his father John Fowell of Black Hall, North Huish, Devon, is dated “Sirius, 10 May 1787” and was written aboard the flagship of the First Fleet just three days before she set sail for Botany Bay.
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“One of the rarest items of early Australiana”
$84000
This is the narrative of the French navigator Binot Paulmyer sieur de Gonneville’s early sixteenth-century voyage from France that claims to have reached the Terre Australe or southern continent. Exceptionally rare: of two or possibly three issues that appeared at around the same time this is an example of the fullest with additional prefatory material.
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Bligh Family manuscripts: with the signatures of William Bligh and his wife Betsy
$22500
A remarkable group of manuscripts regarding the ownership of a property in Exeter over a period of a century and involving William Bligh and numerous close family members. The collection includes a rare example of the signatures of both William Bligh and his wife Elizabeth on the same manuscript document, together with the signatures of Bligh’s nephews Thomas and Francis Godolphin Bond (both of whom had long careers in the Royal Navy, and the latter of whom went on Bligh’s second breadfruit voyage and kept up an important and revealing correspondence with his uncle).
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A New Dictionary of Natural History; or, Compleat Universal Display or Animated Nature…
$9750
One of the great popular works of natural history, this beautiful large-format work is largely based on the great collection of curiosities and exotic specimens of Sir Ashton Lever, the most influential eighteenth-century collector.
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The first Australian botanical book to be illustrated from live specimens
$11850
James Sweet's "Flora Australasica" is of the most attractive of all Australian botanical books and the first with illustrations taken from live specimens rather than dried plants or field sketches, the species depicted having been grown from seeds in London nurseries. This experimentation directly resulted from Joseph Banks’s methods and indicates how widely his influence had spread. This was the third illustrated work devoted to the botany of Australia (the first was James Edward Smith’s of 1793, and the second Bauer’s exceptionally rare "Illustrationes Floræ Novæ Hollandiæ" of 1813).
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