Catalogues
Voyages and travel books, manuscripts & works on paper
Voyage and travel books, manuscripts and works on paper relating to early and colonial Australia, including fine illustrated natural history.
Voyage & travel books from the library of Frank Bayley
We are pleased to offer voyage and travel books principally relating to the Pacific Northwest from the library of Frank Sawyer Bayley III.
Voyages & Natural History
A shortlist including a fine original watercolour attributed to George Tobin (1768-1838), marine artist for Flinders and Bligh on the Providence; a rare first edition in Swedish of Bligh's Voyage to the South Sea 1795; the first major comparative study to illustrate Australian insects, 1789-1825 by Guillaume Antoine Olivier and Pierre André Latreille, and Characteres Generum Plantarum… 1776, a pioneer work on the botany of Australia and the South Pacific by father and son naturalists Johann Reinhold and Georg Forster.
July 2023
Including natural history with the rare first printing of one of Alfred Russel Wallace’s most significant papers: his important text on butterfly variation on the Malay Peninsula; fine illustrated books, literature, and a rare manuscript letter by James Cook, signed by him, written just prior to the arduous second voyage.
Early Australia
Including works on early Australia, natural history and works on paper.
Southeast Asia
Including the rare large paper issue of Raffles' History of Java (1817) and the first illustrated work on Vietnam by John Barrow (1806).
Natural history & rare manuscripts
Fine illustrated natural history, rare manuscripts and voyage material.
There are website links to each item on the relevant pages in the catalogue.
Pickwick!
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.
Illustrated Natural History, Literature & Travel
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.
Pictorial Maritime History
Pacific voyages and major travel
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.