“HORDERN HOUSE of Sydney, Australia, is also in the process of issuing a series of catalogues of a major collection; two have appeared so far. The Whitmont Collection, like John Porter’s Pickering collection, was assembled over decades, eight in this case, and by three generations of a Sydney family rather than by a single individual. The collection consists of 18th and 19th-century printed books, manuscripts and other artefacts illustrating the earliest history of Australia’s discovery...

A fascinating look at a remarkable collection of explorers' artefacts: letters, maps and logbooks which reveal stories of icy frontiers, unimaginable cold, and relentless human resolve... Read here

Sydney's Yellamundie Library is one of four finalists in the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions annual Public Library of the Year award.
Photograph: Andrew Chung/FJC Studio/Liverpool city council

Detail from a famous depiction: a riotous festival given on Nootka Island (British Columbia) by the powerful chief Macuina (Maquinna) to honour his daughter’s arrival at puberty. From a work of great rarity, one of the scarcest of Pacific voyages and an important account of  the last great Spanish exploration of the Northwest coast of America. by Galiano and Valdes in 1792. The atlas volume contains a series of plates of Nootka of great ethnographic importance.  From a....

Included in our July catalogue is the rare first printing of one of Alfred Russel Wallace’s most significant papers: On the Phenomena of Variation and Geographical Distribution as Illustrated by the Papilionidae of the Malayan Region…, his important text on butterfly variation on the Malay Peninsula, illustrated with eight full-page lithographic plates. Of this paper Darwin wrote, “I cannot conceive that the most firm believer in species could read it without being staggered. Such papers will make...

In this very rare and valuable first English edition of this remarkable imaginary voyage, Jacques Sadeur makes his way to the southern land and discovers in western Australia an idealised society of large-bodied hermaphrodites who live in harmony with one another. This English language printing of 1693 contains the very first usage of the words ‘Australia’ and ‘Australian’ in print. The author, Foigny speculates on all manner of Australian qualities, including speech:

“They never speak...