Our April catalogue
Our April catalogue is now published including works on early Australia, natural history and works on paper.
Our April catalogue is now published including works on early Australia, natural history and works on paper.
Including the rare large paper issue of Raffles' History of Java (1817) and the first illustrated work on Vietnam by John Barrow (1806).
Fine illustrated natural history, rare manuscripts and voyage material.
There are website links to each item on the relevant pages in the catalogue.
We offer here an attractive small group of Pickwicks.
Described in the 1930s as “one of the three or four most remarkable books in the whole course of English literature”, perception of that status may have changed a little in the century since, but Dickens’ great and sympathetic classic remains a highpoint of both literature and collecting.
Beautiful illustrated natural history including Gould's Mammals and Macropodidae; works on flora and ornithology as well as literature and travel. Some of the catalogue items are examined in more detail on our website here . There are links to the relevant pages in the catalogue.
The 1821 French edition of Krusenstern’s world voyage puts us in mind of a Pacific Midsummer Night’s Dream with its enchanting lithographs, while the aquatints in the 1802 Relación of the Spanish voyage to the American Northwest coast include a depiction of a breathtaking celebration at Nootka Sound in 1792. These are accompanied in our new catalogue by other major voyage or travel books including Laplace’s formidable account of his world voyage, which is also superbly illustrated with aquatint plates, as is the beautiful copy of Lycett’s Views Australia, or New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land Delineated... . The fine set of Cook’s Voyages in the catalogue belonged to one of his early shipmates.
Including works of the later Enlightenment: examples of the curiosity and thirst for scientific knowledge characteristic of that time.
Including a rare lithographed view by Conrad Martens, an original watercolour by Major James Wallis, artist of the famous early views of Sydney and New South Wales, works of natural history and portraits of Alexander Macleay and the naturalist James Smith; and the work pictured, The Friend of Australia a significant if eccentric proposal for the exploration of the Australian interior, the supreme monument to the speculative geography of the 1820s and 1830s.
For a few decades either side of 1800, the natural history of the new world was a novel source of excitement throughout Europe. Some examples of the outstanding works produced at the time appear in our catalogue, including: Edward Donovan's justly famous illustrated work on Australian entomology with the celebrated companion volumes on the insects of China and India; Henry Andrews' "The Botanist's Repository" one of the rarest of the famous botanical journals of the late-Georgian era, with superb hand-coloured plates ; and William Jackson Hooker's "Exotic Flora".
A highlight from this catalogue is an album assembled in the 1790s containing a deliberate selection of the groundbreaking earliest scientific and artistic work on the natural history of New South Wales from its first European settlement, which connects six figures each of individual importance to that remarkable story: George Shaw, James Edward Smith, F.P. Nodder, James Sowerby, Thomas Wilson and Surgeon John White. The four separate components, including original watercolours by Nodder and a manuscript letter from George Shaw to James Sowerby, are all of considerable individual interest, and must have been gathered together by someone in or close to the immediate circle of figures involved in the earliest publications of Australian natural history.
We have also featured: a rare, unrecorded artist's proof version of Benjamin West's portrait of Sir Joseph Banks; Banks' monumental Florilegium, a supreme example of Eighteenth-Century civilization; and a fine copy of the true first edition of Gulliver's Travels: one of the greatest works of literature associated with Australia.