Our latest themed list spans four centuries of imaginary voyages: whimsical, pedagogical, philosophical, fantastical, satirical: all explorations of Utopia or the world as it will or ought to be. Many offer prescient insight and many are absurd or comedic. Works by Vairasse, the rare "Histoire der Sevarambes" (an imaginary voyage to western Australia), and Foigny's "Les Avantures de Jacques Sadeur dans la découverte ...de la Terre Australe" are present, the earliest by the Dominican Tommasso Campanella prophesying (as a few in this list do) a coming Theocracy. Works by two of the great scholars of humanist thought: Thomas More's "Utopia" and Erasmus' "Praise of Folly" appear together in a very attractive French edition.

Our featured item is a slim work of great beauty, John Richardson's "Icones Piscium": the first separately published work on Australian fishes, the plates after drawings by James Barker Emery, the first Lieutenant on the Beagle voyage during her survey of the Australian coast 1837-1841.