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Flore Medicale, Decrite par F. O.
Read MoreF. P. Chaumeton
Paris: C. L. F. Panckoucke, 1814-1820.Monumental early nineteenth-century French work on medicinal and edible plants, authored by Francois Pierre Chaumeton, Jean Louis Marie Poiret, and Jean-Baptitse-Joseph-Anne-Cesar Turbas de Chamberet. The first six volumes, beginning with Absinthe comprise 360 hand-coloured stipple engravings by Ernestine Panckoucke (the publisher’s wife) and Pierre-Jean-Francois Turpin, produced at the height of the French stipple engraving tradition pioneered by Pierre-Joseph Redoute, a fantastic example of early nineteenth-century botanical art publishing. The final two volumes complete the work with extensive text on pharmacological uses and additional plates, including two large engraved folding tables, forming a comprehensive encyclopaedia of materia medica as understood at the end of the Napoleonic era. NISSEN BBI 349. This copy with the additional corrected description of plate XXI. From the collection of English horticulturalist, Maria Theresa Earle, with her bookplate in each volume, also the plate, name and address of American Rhododendron collector Dr. Paul Jay Bowman. This edition unrecorded in Australian collections, with only one institutional holding of any edition located, the 6-volume second edition (1828-1833) at the University of Melbourne.
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Silva: or, A Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in his Majesty’s Dominions: ..
Read MoreJohn Evelyn; A. Hunter
York: Thomas Wilson and Son for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1812.As it was Delivered in The Royal Society, on the 15th of October, 1662, Upon occasion of certain Queries propounded to the Illustrious Assembly, by the Hon. the Principal Officers and Commissioners of the Navy. Together with An Historical Account of the Sacredness and Use of Standing Groves. .. To Which is Added, The Terra: A Philosophical Discourse of Earth. The Fourth Edition, with the Editor’s Last Corrections, and a Short Memoir of Him. One of the most influential works on forestry ever published in which Evelyn implores landowners to plant trees. This, the 1812 edition, being the fourth edition edited by Scottish physician Alexander Hunter and with illustrations by German engraver and botanist John Miller and with the the portrait frontispiece of Evelyn by Francesco Bartolozzi. This edition also contains Evelyn’s Terra.
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Memoirs, Illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, Esq. F. R. S.
Read MoreJohn Evelyn; William Bray
London: Henry Colburn, 1818.Author of the “Sylva,” &c. &c. Comprising His Diary, From the Year 1641 to 1705-6, and a Selection of His Familiar Letters. To Which is Subjoined, The Private Correspondence Between King Charles I. and His Secretary of State, Sir Edward Nicholas, Whilst His Majesty Was in Scotland, 1641, and at Other Times During the Civil War; Also Between Sir Edward Hyde, Afterwards Earl of Clarendon, and Sir Richard Browne, Ambassador to the Court of France, in the Time of King Charles I. and the Usurpation. The Whole Now First Published, From the Original Mss. in Two Volumes. Edited by William Bray. First Edition of John Evelyn’s Diary, published for the first time posthumously over 100 years after his death.
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The Malay Archipelago
Read MoreAlfred Russel Wallace
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1869.First US edition of the English naturalist’s scientific exploration of 1854-1862.
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The Color Printer: A Treatise on the Use of Color in Typographic Printing
Read MoreJohn F. Earhart
Cincinnati: Earhart & Richardson, 1892.A detailed manual on the use of colour in typography printing, demonstrating how to achieve over 1,000 colours and tints from just 12 inks. The plates illustrate practical applications of colour mixing and showcase examples typographic colour effects. Widely regarded in printing history, typography, and colour theory. The first and only edition, with the signed leaf.
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Old Women
AU$500 Read MoreAdd to cartFrantisek Halas; Ivan Ruzicka; Robert E. Marx
New York: Vestal, 1966.Old Women by Frantisek Halas, written in Czech, was first published in 1935, and here translated into English by Ivan Rizicka with etchings by Robert Marx. One of 25 signed and numbered copies printed in colour (a further 20 numbered copies in black and white also produced).
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Bizarre: A Fashion Fantasia No. 7
Read MoreJohn Willie
Montreal: Bizarre Publishing Co., 1952.Single issue of the foundational fetish magazine of the 20th century. Created, edited, and largely illustrated by John Alexander Scott Coutts (1902-1962), better known by his pseudonym John Willile. Bizarre ran for 26 issues between 1946 and 1959 and remains the most influential fetish periodical of its era. Coutt’s work profoundly shaped later artists such as Eric Stanton, Gene Bilbrew, and erotica publisher Leonard Burtman. Born in Singapore to British parents, Coutts lived in Brisbane and Sydney from 1926 to 1945, it was in Australia that he developed his signature fetish aesthetic centred on high heels, corsetry, and bondage. During this period he produced numerous photographs and drawings, often featuring his wife and model Holly Anna Faram, many of which informed the imagery of Bizarre’s early issues. After a short stint in the Australian Military Forces, Coutts moved to North America in 1945, publishing Bizarre soon after. Though Holly stayed in Australia, Coutts did take with him the influence of the early 20th century underground Australian sexual sub-cultures that had shaped his art over the preceding years. Bringing this Australian perspective to North America and working with other pioneers of the American fetish movement such as Charles Guyette and Irving Klaw, Bizarre became the fashion and fetish icon it is today. Not without his run-ins with the law, Coutts was careful to avoid censorship, framing Bizarre as a fanzine of “extreme fashion”, largely avoiding nudity, homosexuality, and extreme violence, though it is clear that the pages of Bizarre were a safe space for sexual expression. As he writes at the opening of Vol. 3: “The magazine for pleasant optimists who frown on convention. The magazine of fashions and fantasies fantastic!
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The Colt Album
Read MoreJohn S. Barrington; Rip Colt [Jim French]
London: John S. Barrington, No date.Early monograph on American illustrator and publisher Jim French AKA Rip Colt, edited and with a short introduction by English physique photographer John S. Barrington. This issue without a date in the imprint, other copies seen are printed 1973. Unrecorded in OCLC.
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The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Read MoreAlbert Camus
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955.A finely bound first English Edition of Camus’ classic 1942 philosophical essay.
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The Book of Martyrs: Containing an Account of the Sufferings & Death of the Protestants in the Reign of Queen Mary the First.
Read MoreJohn Fox [John Foxe]; M. Madan [Martin Madan]
London: H. Trapp, 1776.18th-century folio edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, here edited by the English barrister and clergyman Martin Madan, better known for his 1780 work advocating polygamy, Thelyphthora, or A Treatise on Female Ruin. This copy with 30 plates, as called for, however some of the plates bound in a different order and the plate of The Burning of Rose Allin replaced with the plate of The Body and Bones of Wickliff Taken Up and Burned from the separately issued The Lives of the Primitive Martyrs.
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The Auncient Ecclesiastical Histories of the First Six Hundred Yeares After Christ, Written in the Greeke tongue by three learned Historiographers, Eusebius, Socrates, and Euagrius.
Read MoreMeredith Hanmer
London: Richard Field, 1619.Eusebius Pamphilus Bishop of Caesarea in Palaestina wrote 10. bookes. Socrates Scholasticus of Constantinople wrote 7. bookes. Euagrius Scholasticus of Antioch wrote 6. bookes. Whereunto is annexed Dorotheus Bishop of Tyrus, of the liues and ends of the Prophets, Apostles, and 70. Disciples. All which authors are faithfully translated out of the Greeke tongue by Meredith Hanmer Doctor of Diuinitie. Last of all, herein is contained a briefe chronographie collected by the said translator, with a copious index of the principall matters throughout all the histories.
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Die Funktion des Orgasmus: Zur Psychopathologie und zur Soziologie des Geschlechtslebens
Read MoreWilhelm Reich
Leipzig, Wien, Zurich: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1927.First Edition of Reich’s psychoanalytical study of orgasm and neurosis. His first full monograph on the subject of orgastic potency arguing that neurotic illness arises form the inability to achieve complete orgastic release. A foundational Reichian work which he dedicated to Freud.
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade)
Read MoreMark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens)
London: Chatto & Windus, 1884.The first UK edition published prior to the US edition with the first issue advertisements dated October 1884. BAL 3414.
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Carlo Mollino: Un Messaggio dalla Camera Oscura
Read MoreCarlo Mollino; Gerald A. Matt
Nurnberg: Kunsthalle, 2011.“Carlo Mollino (1905-1973) was possessed of both tremendous energy and incredibly diverse abilities: famed as an architect and furniture designer, he was also a writer, photographer, race-car driver and downhill skier. His private life was no less intense. Mollino had a closely guarded obsession with erotic portraiture, and would regularly invite prostitutes from the streets of Turin to come to his home and pose for him. The scenes were carefully prepared: the models would dress (or partially undress) in costumes, accessories and wigs that Mollino had acquired on trips to France or Southeast Asia, and pose before backdrops of drapery, screens and sculptural furniture. Despite the furtive circumstances of their production, these portraits express the aesthetics of Mollino’s more public photographs, as the models appear more statuesque than pornographic. Likewise, the opulent interiors and opulent furnishings of Mollino’s private homes in Turin, the Villa Zaira and what is now known as Casa Mollino serve as crucial components of the compositions. In 1962, Mollino began to employ Polaroid film for these shoots, eventually making some 1,300 exposures before his death in 1973. Neither these nor the silver gelatin works that preceded them were published in his lifetime, and this is the first publication of these Polaroids.” (publisher’s blurb)
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Hustlers
Read MorePhilip-Lorca diCorcia
Gottingen: Steidl, 2013.Oversize photo book by American photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia (1953-) documenting male prostitutes. “I took the Hustler photographs following a period of repressive stomping on the U.S. Constitution’s First Amemdment, “Freedom of Speech”. An appropriate personification of the moment would be Jesse Helms, a man deeply committed to his bigotry. He was responsible for a lot of the stomping. In 1989, the National Endowment for the Arts was attacked for supporting a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition that was canceled as a result. In the same year, the money I received from the NEA had a proviso attached which required that I not transgress “American” values; at least that is how I remember it. I’ll be it was more onerous. Other artist recipients called for a boycott, or some kind of protest. I decided to beat Mr. Helms et al. at their own game, mendacity. I paid the “hustlers” in these photographs with the money awarded to me by the NEA. The price was meant to be the normal cost for the lowest common denominator of street sex. Of course it varies. Hustlers lie a lot too. I’ve included in the titles the name, age, hometown, and price paid of each one, as an emphatic declaration of the identity mutation and the taxonomy of the project implied. And, as a report to the government of its well-spent dollars. (from artist’s statement) A selection of 21 of the photographs were exhibited in diCorcia’s first museum show, Strangers, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1993. Here for the first time the complete series is published in it entirety.
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Human Negotiations
AU$500 Read MoreAdd to cartKatharina Hesse; Lara Day
Beijing: Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, 2011.Photo book of Bangkok female and transsexual sex workers. Photography by Katharina Hesse with text based on interviews by Lara Day. This copy signed by Hesse.
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Ai Weiwei: New York 1983 – 1993
Read MoreAi Weiwei
Beijing: Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, 2010.The true first edition of Weiwei’s New York Photographs series produced when he was living the East Village from 1983 to 1993.
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New York, 1954.55
Read MoreWilliam Klein
Manchester: Dewi Lewis Publishing, 1995.Revised edition of Klein’s landmark photo book first published as Life is Good & Good For You in New York (Paris, 1956).
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Balkan Pank
Read MoreJoze Suhadolnik
: Akina Books, 2014.Photo book of the 1980s punk scene in former Yugoslavia. One of 50 unnumbered copies of the collector’s edition in a coptic binding with screenprinted cover (a softcover edition of 200 copies was also produced).
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Morgue
Read MoreJeffrey Silverthorne
London: Stanley / Barker, 2017.Photo book of a series of photographs taken by American photographer Jeffrey Silverthorne (1946-2022) at the state morgue of Rhode Island in 1972 and 1973.
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Winfield and Australia: Together Since 1972 / Brand Manual …anyhow*
Read MoreJackie Blackledge
[Sydney]: British American Tobacco Australia, 2011.Privately produced brand manual chronicling the marketing of Winfield cigarettes in Australia, featuring Paul Hogan’s iconic advertising campaigns. Created by the Sydney office of global marketing agency G2 and issued privately for BATA employees in a very limited run. Unrecorded in Trove or OCLC. “Winfield was the first brand to say to Australians that it was okay to be Australian, that , in fact, it was preferable. As a result, Aussies loved it, they quickly drove Winfield to an 8.4% share in the first year; a never-before-seen result in an industry where getting a 0.5% share was an excellent achievement for a new brand.” (from page 24) The same page also featuring a 1983 photograph by Rennie Ellis, Two Couples.
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Minutes to Midnight
Read MoreTrent Parke
Gottingen: Steidl, 2013.Photo book of an uneasy Australia produced from a 2003 road trip around the country by Australian photographer Trent Parke (1971-). In 2007 Parke became the first Australian member of Magnum Photos.
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Kings Cross Sydney: A Personal Look at the Cross
Read MoreRennie Ellis; Wesley Stacey
Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1971.Documentation of Sydney’s Kings Cross in the early 1970s. Showgirls, servicemen, freaks, hippies, sex, drugs, music art, and more. Features a spread on The Witch of Kings Cross, Rosaleen Norton.
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The Americans
Read MoreRobert Frank
New York: Aperture, 1978.Introduction by Jack Kerouac. Third edition of Frank’s classic photo book, being the first edition in the larger format.
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Romance
AU$400 Read MoreAdd to cartYao Jui-Chung
Taipei: Garden City Publishing, 2010.Monograph published to accompany the solo exhibition of Taiwanese artist Yao Jui-Chung. One of 500 signed and numbered copies.
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Expressions of Lovemaking
Read MoreWesley Stacey; Rennie Ellis
Sydney: Pontiac, 1972.Rare early erotic photo book by Australian photographer Wesley Stacey (1941-2023), issued the year before he co-founded the Australian Centre for Photography. A period document of liberated sexuality and countercultural aesthetics, the work pairs Stacey’s intimate colour photographs of a young couple (shot in settings including a cave, penthouse, pool, bedroom, and beach), with the sensual poetry of fellow photographer Rennie Ellis (1940-2003). Stylistically rooted in the late-1960s and early-1970s Australian bohemian milieu. Exceptionally scarce: a single holding recorded in Trove and OCLC (Curtin University). The work is otherwise unrecorded in writings on either Stacey or Ellis. The only public reference to its existence appears in a 1976 ruling of the New Zealand Indecent Publications Tribunal, which described it as “another publication consisting of photographs of sexual intercourse with a small amount of text. It is serious in intention, though not didactic, natural and restrained in presentation with a straightforward text. The photographs depict basic variations of normal intercourse without any of the tasteless or debasing acrobatics which have marred other similar publications… Having regard to the changing times and standards and the dominant effect of this publication the tribunal considers that a restricted classification in this case is not necessary. The tribunal classifies this publication as not indecent.” (The New Zealand Gazette No. 117, 18 November 1976)
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Erotica Varia: A Collection of Drawings by Xaqis
Read MoreCharis Schwarz
Sydney: Herd Publishing Company, No date.The erotic drawings of Charis Schwarz issued in the early 1970s by Australian pornography publisher, Herd Publishing, at the same time as Charis together with husband George were producing a series of ground-breaking pornographic films, including the first explicit Australian sex film to be cleared by the censors for distribution in cinemas. Rare, a single institutional holding, at the State Library of New South Wales, as part of the George and Charis Schwarz collection presented to the State Library by the artists in 2019.
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Les Amies de Lady Chattieley
AU$400 Read MoreAdd to cartGeorges de Chanrosey [Chanrosay]
Paris: Librairie des Editions Modernes, No date.1930s French flagellation and sadomasochistic novel with the title recalling D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Illustrated with 12 black and white plates by W. Floger [Edouard Bernard / Edward Alexander Bernard].
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Confidences Egarees
AU$550 Read MoreAdd to cartLiane Laure [Liane de Lauris]
Paris: Collection des Orties Blanches, 1932.1930s French flagellation. Jean Fort publication under his sadomasochistic imprint Collection des Orties Blanches. Illustrated with 16 plates by Dagy [Daniel Girard], this copy with 5 of the plates hand-coloured.
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Flagellees: La Flagellation des Femmes dans la Rome Antique
AU$550 Read MoreAdd to cartJean de Virgans
Paris: Librairie Franco-Anglaise, 1922.1920s French flagellation novel with illustrations by Gaston Smit signed in the image as both G. Smit and G. Topfer.
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Gisele et Pierrette ou Les Esclaves d’Island Castle
AU$800 Read MoreAdd to cartJames Starbine
Paris: Libraire Artistique et Edition Parisienne Reunies, 1932.French 1930s sadomasochist novel. With illustrations by Gaston Smit, signed in the images as G. Topfer.
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Orgies Demoniaques: Orgies a bord d’un yacht
Read MoreGuy d’ Echara
: Collection des Lits Clos, No date.1950s Eric Losfeld clandestine publication of [Demonic Orgies on a Yacht], with the 6 plates in sepia depicting group sex scenes. DUTEL 2121.
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Chansons Folles
AU$500 Read MoreAdd to cart[Gustave Nadaud]
Evreux: Charles Herissey, 1887.Collection of 41 erotic songs with musical score by Gustave Nadaud and published anonymously with a fine frontispiece engraving by Henry Somm. One of 75 numbered copies on Japon (of a total edition of 300). This copy with a two-page signed letter by the author in purple ink dated 29 Avril 1882, written on nice stationery that features the letterhead Rue Charles Laffitte, 63, Neuilly, (Seine); and a two-page song composed on the same stationery in the same purple ink.
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Le Panier aux Ordures suivi de Quelques Chansons, Ejusdem Farine
AU$550 Read MoreAdd to cart[Armand Gouffe]
Canton [Bruxelles]: W. Field et Tching-Kong [Gay & Douce], No date.Belgian clandestine publication of the erotic poems of Armand Gouffe. The erotic title vignette depicts a young lady lifting her skirt to a priest in a kitchen. This copy from the collection of erotophile Gershon Legman, with bibliographical notes in his hand and signed by him. Legman’s note reads as follows: “[Bruxelles: Gay & Douce 1875] Enfer 29; BM. PC. 1769. 1st ed. as : Le Panier aux ordures, par Armand Gouffe et autres. [Paris – London: John Camden Hotten, for Lord Houghton, 1865.]. 36 f., lg 8vo. Hand-drawn facsimile by H.J. Bellars, erotic drawings by Ulm. No copy.* 2nd ed. (first typographical): [title as here,] [Libreville, a a la Society pour la propagation des livres de l’Enfer’ [Bruxelles: Jules Gay], 1866. vi, 154 p. smal 8vo. (106 copies.) BM.PC. 31 g. 4; Coll. G.L. 1957 G. Legman.” The asterisk from above reads, at bottom of page, “except that of Pierre Louys, coll. Bottin, Nice, in 1962].” Laid in also is a folded piece of typescript from Legman noting “SOLD to RP02/2016” (that is, Richard Press, from his widow) and then the explanation of the woodcut engraving at title page, “probably by Gilbert,” “showing a priest kneeling before a woman holding up her skirts before a kitchen fireplace to show her cunt.” 151 pp. And with occasional pencil marginalia translations into English (mostly of titles).
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Mnemosyne
Read MoreBill Henson
Zurich and Sydney: Scalo and Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2005. -
Series of Five Colour Woodblock Prints on the 1998 Australian Waterfront Dispute
Read MorePaula Bloch (1937-2010)
Sydney: Paula Bloch, 2001-2003.A complete set of Australian printmaker and activist Paula Bloch’s woodblock series inspired by her participatoin on the picket line at Port Botany during the 1998 Maritime Union of Australia dispute with Patrick Corporation and the Howard Government. The series documents the artist’s direct experience of one of the most significant industrial confrontations in modern Australian history, in which Patrick sought to sack its unionised workforce in an attempt to break the M.U.A. The complete series is here offered together with 2 variants and 2 original sketch concept drawings. Full list of items: 1. M.U.A. Here To Stay: Port Botany at the Picket Line. Signed and numbered colour woodblock. 2/5 dated 2001; 1b. Colour variant, unsigned; 1c. Original sketch concept drawing; 2. M.U.A. Supporters Stay: Jennie George Reports at Port Botany. Signed and dated 2003.; 2.b Original sketch concept drawing.; 3. Sydney Town Hall Square: Rally of Unionists and Supporters. Unsigned.; 4. Maritime Union of Australia: Protest Meeting at Darling Harbour.; 4b. Black and white variant.; 5. [MUA Here To Stay]. Smaller format: 31cm x 30cm, unsigned. Bloch, who fled Nazi Germany with her parents as a child, wrote of the dispute: “I escaped Hitler’s Germany with my parents just before the war, and grew up with a strong commitment to people’s rights. The waterfront lock-out was such a shock – fascist tactics in Australia.” Her prints combine a personal political conviction with a formal language drawn from European protest graphics and the screenprint traditions of the 1970s Tin Sheds poster workshops. Four of the five prints are held in the National Library of Australia (the present third print, Sydney Town Hall Square, apparently unrecorded.)
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International Mr. Leather: 25 Years of Champions
Read MoreJoseph W. Bean
Las Vegas and Chicago: Nazca Plains and The Leather Archives & Museum, 2004.A thoroughly illustrated year-by-year chronicle of the world’s premier gay leather contest, founded by Chuck Resnlow in Chicago in 1979. Australia entered the IML story early: Patrick Brooks, the winner of IML 1980, became the first non-American titleholder and remains one of the most competition’s most controversial champsions. Brooks and his sponsor reportedly believed that winning the titled conferred hosting rights for the following year’s event, and briefly announced plans for IML 1981 to be held in Sydney before organisers clarified that the contest would remain in Chicago. Despite this misunderstanding, the Australian leather scene flourished, with Mr. Australia Leather contests continuing through the 1980s and 1990s, regularly sending representatives to IML. Notably, Australians achieved two runner-up finishes: Brent Lacey, Mr. Laird Leather Image (Melbourne), placed second in 1993, and Andrew Lennon, Mr. Mephisto Leather (Sydney), placed second in 1998. Bean’s volume documents these milestones among hundreds of photographs and profiles of titleholders, capturing a global leather brotherhood that prominently included Australia from its earliest days. Unrecorded in Australian institutional collections.
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Of Those Alone
AU$1,000 Read MoreAdd to cartRobert Hutton
London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1958.The pseudonymous autobiography of Horace Charles Forbes Cheston, published under the name Robert Hutton shortly after the release of the Wolfenden Report. Written at a time when homosexuality was still criminalised and taboo, Of Those Alone offers an unusually candid account of Cheston’s sexual and emotional life. Moving between Paris, California, New York, and the South of France before returning to England, he recounts his affairs, his ill-fated marriage to an American woman, and his descent into alcoholism, concluding with redemption through Alcoholics Anonymous, an organisation he later helped to establish in Britain. One of the earliest openly homosexual autobiographies of the postwar period, it precedes the more widely known works of the 1960s gay liberation era and is quite likely the first memoir of a gay alcoholic writer.
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Transactor: WATSUP December 93
Read MoreWATSUP
Perth: WATSUP, 1993.Newsletter of the Western Australian Trans* Support, Unity, Pride. Contains a Presidents Report, A History of Female Impersonation, a copy of the Ministry of Justic, Corrective Services Division Transsexual Assessment and Placement Policy February 1992 issue regarding prison policy on transgender prisoners, membership application/renewal form, and more. Unrecorded in Trove or OCLC. A single copy can be located in the Rikki Swin collection of the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria, Canada.
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Carrousel Club South Australia, September 1994
Read MoreCarrousel Club
Adelaide: Carrousel Club, 1994.Single issue of the newsletter of the South Australian crossdressing organisation, Carrousel Club. Contains an invitation to The Elaine Barrie Project Awards, a grumble on meeting RSVPs, an article from the 11 August 1994 Advertiser on an a premiere of Priscilla, and more.
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Transformation: Turning Men into Beautiful Women
Read MoreTransformation
Manchester: Transformation, No date.Mail-order catalogue for Transformation, the English transsexual mail-order company founded in 1984 by Stephanie Anne Booth (1946-2016). The firm supplied clothing, cosmetics, prosthetics, wigs, and accessories for transsexual and cross-dressing clientele, and became one of the first British businesses to openly serve this market. Booth’s entrepreneurial ventures under the Transformation banner later extended to a gender identity clinic, a contact and dating magazine, and other related services. Her activities occasionally drew controversy, culminating in her arrest for running a bawdy house in connection with a massage service operated under the same name. This catalogue reflecting some of the risque aspects of her business, featuring titillating photography and fetishwear alongside transformation aids and fashion items.
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Bushwalking Around Sydney
Read MorePaddy Pallin
Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1959.Guidebook by the famed Australian bushwalker and camping equipment retailer Frank Austin “Paddy” Pallin. Pallin was a founding member of the Search and Rescue arm of the Confederation of Bushwalking Clubs NSW in 1936 and his chain of stores are still operating today.
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Les Fleurs du Mal
Read MoreCharles Baudelaire; Armand Rassenfosse; Henri Noulhac
Paris: Les Cent Bibliophiles, 1899.One of 115 numbered copies of the first, and widely considered the best, illustrated edition of The Flowers of Evil, being the chef d’oeuvre of Belgian artist Armand Rassenfosse, with nearly every page of the text illustrated with Symbolist colour etchings and nude women. This copy from the collection of actor and bibliophile Barry Humphries, with his bookplate; bound in a fine binding signed Noulhac 1918, with multi-rule borders and silk doublures framed with inlaid leather strips and flowers at the corners. Illustrated with a portrait frontispiece, throughout with hundreds of colour illustrations and tailpieces, as well as 6 plates and a page of text with tailpiece outside of the text. Bound at the rear is a Juin 1897 Specimen being the leaf of XX La Geante with an alternative tailpiece illustration and the chapter plate for Les Fleurs du Mal, an etched menu cover for a Les Cent Bibliophiles Dinner for Fleurs du Mal, 6 Mai 1901 by Rassenfosse, as well as 17 additional etchings by Evert van Muyden and other artists.
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The Idol: Opium, Heroin, Morphine and Their Kingdoms
Read MoreDr. Cantala
New York: Botwen Printing Co., 1924.Considered one of the scarcest books in all of psychoactive drug literature and one of the most important on opiate addiction, predicting the development of synthetic opioids by some 35 years. “Devoted to the medical and social uses of opiates, including sections on opium dens, needlemania, the psychology of the addict, the nature of opiate intoxication, love among addicts, etc. There are chapters on cocaine and hashish, and another on Dr. Cantala’s method of cure.” (William Dailey via Gertz: Dope Menace pp. 30). One of a small number bound in cloth with the original wrapper illustration mounted. 4 copies recorded in OCLC, all in the United States.
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Les Amours de Psyche et de Cupidon
Read MoreJ. De La Fontaine
Paris: Defer de Maisonneuve, 1791.The Loves of Psyche and Cupid by Jean De La Fontaine with colour illustrations based on paintings by M. Schall. One of the most striking editions of Fontaine’s adaptation of the story of Cupid and Psyche with coloured stipple engravings by Bonnefoy, Mme Demonchy, and Colibert after Jean-Frederic Schall. This copy with the advertisement leaf (often lacking) announcing the publication of Milton’s Paradise Lost, with an additional portrait engraving frontispiece by Edelinck after H. Rigault, and an original drawing dedication “quatre amis dont la connaissance avait commence par le Parnasse” [four friends whose acquaintance had begun at Parnassus]: La Fontaine, Racine, Moliere, and Boileau, in pen and Indian ink enhanced with gold and colouring on vellum signed L. Benard 1893, bound in a fine signed binding by the Paris bookbinder Salvador David (1859-1929).
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Theatrum Botanicum: The Theater of Plants. Or, An Herball of Large Extent
Read MoreJohn Parkinson
London: Tho. Cotes, 1640.Containing therein a more ample and exact History and declaration of the Physicall Herbs and Plants that are in other Authours, encreased by the accesse of many hundreds of new, rare, and strange Plants from all the parts of the world, with sundry Gummes and other Physicall materials, than hath beene hitherto published by any before; And a most large demonstration of their Natures and Venues. Shewing withall the many errors, differences, and oversights of sundry Authors that have formerly written of them; and a certaine confidence, or most probable conjecture of the true and genuines Herbes and Plants. Distributes into sundry Classes or Tribes. The monumental work of herbal medicine by the English herbalist and botanist John Parkinson (1567-1650) in which over 3,800 plants are described and illustrated by approximately 2,600 woodcut illustrations. Theatrum Botanicum was a standard reference for apothecaries for over a century after it was published.
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Remember, Be Here Now
Read MoreRam Dass
San Cristobel: Lama Foundation, 1971.First edition, first printing, of the psychedelic/yoga/philosophy/counterculture classic by LSD spiritualist Ram Dass nee Harvard Professor Richard Alpert.
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Weirdo No. 1
AU$200 Read MoreAdd to cartRobert Crumb
Berkeley: Last Gasp, 1981.“Picking up where Zap left off, Weirdo defined a new aesthetic for the ’80s, opening the way towards a new wave of comics literacy for a generation of outcasts, oddballs and revolutionaries. Weirdo #1, helmed by Robert Crumb, features comics from Crumb, satiric ads, photo-funnies from “Stomp” Gamos and Weirdo staff, Stanislav Szukalski, Bruce Duncan, Brueghel, a Sub-Genius spread and more!” (publisher’s blurb)
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A Manual of Homoeopathic Cookery, Designed Chiefly for the Use of Such Persons as Are under Homoeopathic Treatment.
AU$800 Read MoreAdd to cartThe Wife of a Homoeopathic Physician
London: G. Borwon, 1846.A cookbook for the burgeoning devotees of homeopathy.
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The Olive and Its Products
AU$550 Read MoreAdd to cartLewis A. Bernays
Brisbane: James C. Beal, Government Printer, 1872.A Treatise on the Habits, Cultivation, and Propagation of the Tree; and upon the Manufacture of Oil and Other Products Therefrom. Early publication on developing an olive industry in Queensland. Lewis Adolphus Bernays (1831-1908) was the first Clerk of the Queensland Legislative Assembly and as a foundation member of the Queensland Acclimatisation Society devoted to introducing exotic species for commercial purposes wrote a number of papers on economic botany. FERGUSON 6952.
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Les Ames du Purgatoire
Read MoreProsper Merimee; Hermann Paul
Paris: Rene Kieffer, 1929.The Souls of Purgatory, short story retelling of the myth of Don Juan, the first edition with fifteen watercolours by Hermann Paul. One of a numbered edition of 450 copies on wove paper (of a total edition of 480), this copy bound by French bookbinder Rene Kieffer (1875-1964) in a fine full leather binding with an elaborate star, heart, and chain blind design to both boards, with his ticket to the endpaper, the original wrappers bound in.
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Les Civilises
AU$800 Read MoreAdd to cartClaude Farrere; Henri Le Riche
Paris: Librairie de la Collection des Dix, 1926.French colonizers indulge in fornication, opium, and general debauchery in late 19th century Saigon (then French Cochincina, modern day Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam). One of 200 numbered copies of Arches vellum (of a total edition of 300), bound with the original wrappers.
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La Mort de Philae
AU$400 Read MoreAdd to cartPierre Loti; Geo Colucci
Paris: Editions Rene Kieffer, 1924.The Death of Philae (English title: Egypt), a tale set around the submerging of the island of Philae with the construction of the Aswan Low Dam on the river Nile. The first edition with illustrations by Geo Colucci. One of 460 numbered copies on vellum (of a total edition of 500), in a fine half leather binding signed Ch. De Samblax with the original wrappers bound in.
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Le Diable Amoureux
AU$400 Read MoreAdd to cartJacques Cazotte; Paul-Emile Becat
Paris: La Tradition, 1936.The Devil in Love. Occult romance first published in 1772. This the first edition with erotic illustrations by Becat. One of 450 numbered copies on Arches vellum (of a total edition of 500).
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Le Diable au Corps
AU$2,000 Read MoreAdd to cartRaymond Radiguet; Paul-Emile Becat
Paris: Editions Georges Gullot, 1957.The Devil in the Flesh. The story of a young married woman’s affair with a teenage boy while her husband is away fighting in WWI. First published in 1923, this is the first edition with erotic illustrations by Becat, and with an introduction by Jean Cocteau. The superlative issue, one of 16 numbered copies on Japanese paper with an original signed drawing in pencil and white gouache, with the composition then hand coloured and signed by Becat, the 16 illustrations by Becat hand coloured by Jean and Paulette Monnier, followed by a suite containing the illustrations in black in two states, on Japanese paper and Rives vellum.
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Ars Amandi. L’Art D’Aimer
AU$1,000 Read MoreAdd to cartOvide; Pierre Lievre; Andre Lambert
Paris: Le Livre du Bibliophile, G. & R. Briffaut, 1923.The Art of Love by Ovid, a new translation into French by Pierre Lievre and with illustrations by Andre Lambert. One of 404 numbered copies on Arches vellum (from a total edition of 500), this copy for Maurice de Smet de Naeyer, bound in half leather signed Weckesser.
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Les Sept Femmes de La Barbe-Bleue et Autres Contes Merveilleux
Read MoreAnatole France; G. A. Mossa
Paris: Librairie Des Amaterus, A. Ferroud. – F. Ferroud, 1921.Bluebeard’s Seven Wives and Other Wonderful Tales. France’s reinterpretation of the French folktale of Bluebeard. First published in 1909, this is the first edition with illustrations by Gustav-Adolf Mossa. One of 70 numbered copies on Japanese paper with the etchings in 3 states (from a total edition of 1,200). This copy from the collection of Australian actor and bibliophile Barry Humphries, with his bookplate, in a fine signed binding by Flammarion bookbinder Jean Vaillant.
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The Dog in Australasia
AU$1,000 Read MoreAdd to cartWalter Beilby
Melbourne: George Robertson and Company, 1897.The first Australian dog breeder’s manual. FERGUSON 6885.
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Mandatory Masquerade
Read MoreTrina Beaumont
Sydney [Ulladulla]: The Seahorse Club of Australia, 1981.Illustrated novella published by Seahorse, Australia’s first transgender support organisation. Authored by Trina Beaumont (formerly Trina Taylor), long-time editor of the club’s newsletter, Feminique, and a media advocate for the organisation during the 1970s. At the time, Seahorse primarily served heterosexual men who enjoyed cross-dressing, presenting members as ordinary men who occasionally adopted female attire. The novella includes illustrations by Di Ward and represents a rare example of early Australian transgender literature and community-produced publishing. A single copy recorded in OCLC, at the State Library of New South Wales.
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Mushrooms, Russia and History
AU$14,000 Read MoreAdd to cartValentina Pavolvna Wasson; R. Gordon Wasson
New York: Pantheon Books, 1957.The founding work of ethnomycology. One of 512 numbered copies. The Wassons’ central thesis divided cultures into “mycophilic” and “mycophobic” (those that embraced mushrooms and those that feared them), with Russia and the Anglo-Saxon world as the defining poles. Their investigations led to the study of psychoactive mushroom use in Mesoamerican religious ceremony, culminating in R. Gordon Wasson’s participation in a Mazatec velada with the curandera Maria Sabina in 1955. The resulting work bridges folklore, linguistics, botany, and anthropology, and laid the groundwork for the modern study of psychoactive fungi and later, entheogens. Produced at the Stamperia Valdonega in Verona under the direction of Giovanni Mardersteig, the edition is equally significant as a feat of book production, two large quarto volumes with 82 plates including 32 in colour, printed in a limited edition at the authors’ expense.
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Public Fitting
AU$2,500 Read MoreAdd to cartTim Johnson
Sydney: Tim Johnson, 1972.A 1972 artist’s book by Sydney conceptual artist (now painter) Tim Johnson (1947-), containing 40 full page black and white street photographs which show the wind lifting the skirts of women on the streets of Sydney. Produced during his time as co-founder of one of Sydney’s first artist-run spaces, Inhibodress, alongside Mike Parr and Peter Kennedy, the work forms a key part of Johnson’s early-1970s investigations into public space, social conditioning, and eroticism. While the images might initially appear voyeuristic (see upskirt), they are best understood through the lens of his contemporaneous performances, Disclosure and Fittings. Those live works staged situations to expose and analyze unconscious “sexual mores” and “sex-role conditioning”, manipulating participants’ clothing in a gallery, provoking direct responses. Public Fitting explores similar themes through the “found performance” of the street, framing the wind as an unwitting collaborator and the women’s reactions as unscripted data on social behaviour. Published alongside a Super 8 film of the same name (featuring different images as compared with the film in the collection of the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane), the film’s duration underscores the work’s non-erotic, analytical dimension. In contrast, the book’s static images are more readily misread as purely voyeuristic. This copy bears a later manuscript title on the spine, “Public Fitting – XXX”, a direct annotation of the work’s perceived erotic content, demonstrating the very social-sexual condition the artist sought to examine. Beyond this conceptual framework, the work also serves a vidid record of women’s fashion in early-1970s Sydney, an era dominated by the miniskirt. The edition size is unstated, though several sources, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, state that 200 copies were produced. This copy with an additional folded sheet containing 5 further small images of a woman’s underwear (perhaps from a different source), the artist’s stamp with his 54 Albermarle St address, and the contemporary signature Micheal [Mansell?] dated 17th/4/72.
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Julie, ou J’ai Sauve ma Rose. Par Madame de C***.
Read More[Felicite de Choiseul-Meuse?]; [Madame Guyot?]
A Hambourg, et se Trouve a Paris: Chez les Marchands de Nouveautes, 1807.Possibly the first sapphic novel written by a woman, over a century before Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. The vivid depiction of lesbian love lends to the warning on the title page, “La mere en defendra la lecture a sa fille” [The mother will forbid her daughter to read it], and led to the novel’s censure in 1825 and on the ruling of obscenity and its order of destruction in 1827. First published in 1807, this is a well survived example of the second edition, differing from the first with the French spelling modernized, published in 1820 or 1821 but with the same 1807 imprint of the first edition. Sometimes attributed to Felicite de Choiseul-Meuse, and also to Madame Guyot, both have been refuted. PERCEAU 6-2, PIA pp. 662-3, GAY Vol. IV pp. 196.
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The Expected Good End, in Three Parts
AU$10,000 Read MoreAdd to cartS. M. Ish Yeminy
London: L. Alexander, 1800.Rare Anglo-Sephardi Judaica theological work linking Jewish messianic exegesis with Enlightenment-era cosmopolitanism. Part 1 (and the only published) of a planned three part work by the Sephardi rabbi and Freemason Solomon Mordecai Ximenes; Containing, The Birth of Jacob, his Dream of the Ladder, his Commandments, and his several prophetic Blessings to his Posterity; and various future Events promised by the Prophets. ROTH, Magna Bibliotheca Anglo-Judaica p. 332 19a. Provenance: Signature and label of the Sydney lay preacher G. P. Beyfus, label of Mr. Pulver, library call number to spine matching others from the collection of the Rabbi L. A. Falk Memorial Library, The Great Synagogue Sydney (deaccessioned with no other library markings).
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Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
AU$1,000 Read MoreAdd to cartTerry Pratchett; Neil Gaiman
London: Victor Gollancz, 1990.First edition, first printing, in a full leather modern art binding by Queensland bookbinder Karen McGuire.
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Lucifer
AU$400 Read MoreAdd to cartStephen Skinner; Neville Drury
Sydney: The Lucifer Publishing Company, 1968.One shot Australian underground newspaper edited by Stephen Skinner with artwork by Neville Drury, Bob Smith, C. Foley, and Michele. Writings include an experiential report on the psychedelic STP (DOM), Bob Dylan’s film Don’t Look Back, Flying Saucers, Alchemy, and more.
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The Edible Mollusks of Great Britain and Ireland with Recipes for Cooking Them
AU$500 Read MoreAdd to cartM. S. Lovell
London: Reeve & Co., 1867.The definitive work on the subject of edible snails, shellfish, oysters, mussels, etc. This copy with the Reeve & Co. 24 page 1867 catalogue of publications in Botany, Conchology, Entomology, Chemistry, Travels Antiquities, etc. at the rear.
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La Fille aux Yeux d’Or
AU$2,000 Read MoreAdd to cartHonore de Balzac; Almery Lobel-Riche
Paris: Le Livre du Bibliophile, G. & R. Briffaut, 1923.The Girl with the Golden Eyes. An aristocratic libertine becomes obsessed with a beautiful woman and sets about seducing her. Alas, his conquest uncovers a hidden lesbian relationship and he finds himself entangled in a web of erotic obsession and fatal jealousy. First published in 1835, this is the first edition with illustrations by Almery Lobel-Riche. One of 40 numbered copies on Japanese paper with the etchings in 3 states and an original drawing by Lobel-Riche (from a total edition of 500). This copy in a fine signed binding by H. Jacquet.
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Armed with Madness
Read MoreMary Butts; Jean Cocteau
London: Wishart & Company, 1928.Experimental novel based on the myth of the Holy Grail. A one time student of Aleister Crowley, Butts is credited as a co-author of the 1912 Magick (Book 4). In 1921 she spent time at Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema, not enjoying her stay, and departing with a drug habit. Armed with Madness explores the relationships (including homoeroticism and bisexuality) and ritualism among a group of young bohemians living at a country home. Considered a masterpiece of Modernist prose. One of 100 numbered copies of the Deluxe Edition on handmade paper with illustrations by Jean Cocteau.
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The Economic Consequences of the Peace
AU$2,000 Read MoreAdd to cartJohn Maynard Keynes
London: Macmillan and Co., 1919.First edition, first printing of the highly influential economics work published in the wake of WWI, establishing Keynes’ as one of the world’s leading economists.
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Coffee: Its History, Cultivation, and Uses
AU$1,000 Read MoreAdd to cartRobert Hewitt, Jr.
New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1872.19th century history of coffee. Brief mention of Australia’s potential as a coffee growing region, as well a global listing of tariffs on coffee, including Australian colonies. This copy signed by the author, and with the world map, A Chart of the Globe Showing the Several Places Where Coffee is or May be Produced and Where it is also used together with The Telegraph Lines in operation or contemplated for completing the Circuit of the Globe, considered the first American map on coffee.
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Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, Chiefly Concerning Nitrous Oxide, or Dephlogisticated Nitrous Air, and Its Respiration
AU$6,000 Read MoreAdd to cartHumphry Davy
London: J. Johnson, 1800.Researches, Chiefly Concerning Nitrous Oxide. Published when Davy was only 22, outlining his experiments with nitrous, coining the term laughing gas, and suggesting to its anesthetic qualities, which were not regularly used in medicine for many years to come. A landmark work in chemistry and anesthesia. Provenance: Pencil signature of British crime writer and anaesthetist William Stanley Sykes (1894-1961) with three lines of pencil annotation to front free endpaper.
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Groups of Fruit, Accurately Drawn and Coloured After Nature, with Full Directions for the Young Artist: Designed as a Companion to the Treatises on Flowers and Birds.
Read MoreGeorge Brookshaw
London: For William Stockdale by Augustus Applegath and Henry Mitton, 1817.The rare first edition of the second part of the three part treatise on natural history painting by the English artist and author of Pomono Britannica, George Brookshaw (c.1751-1823). Each plate: Apples, Apricots, Cherries, Currants, Pears, Plums; is presented in two states, un-coloured and with hand-colouring, and each is accompanied by 1 or 2 pages of instructive text. This copy complete, but with the plates bound in alphabetical order, rather than the order of the instructive text.
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Salome. Drame en un acte.
AU$4,000 Read MoreAdd to cartOscar Wilde
Paris and Londres: Librairie de L’Art Independant and Elkin Mathew et John Lane, 1893.First edition, one of 600 copies, the title page device by Felicien Rops. MASON 348. This copy rebound in a fine signed art nouveau binding by Hatchards, Piccadilly, without the wrappers, with a plentiful quantity of blank leaves at the rear to allow for the binding design.
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Les Paradis Artificiels: Opium et Haschisch
AU$4,000 Read MoreAdd to cartCharles Baudelaire
Paris: Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 1860.First edition of Baudelaire’s Artificial Paradises, on the drug experiences of hashish and opium and their relationship with creative expression, being accounts from within the walls of Le Club des Haschischins and a translation and adaptation of Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. CARTERET I:126. This copy rebound in a fine half leather binding without the wrappers.
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Condoman Says: Don’t Be Shame Be Game. Use Condoms!
Read MoreDepartment of Health, Housing and Community Services, Aboriginal Health Workers of Australia (Queensland)
Queensland: Department of Health, Housing and Community Services, Aboriginal Health Workers of Australia, No date.Early/mid 1990s issue of the iconic Aboriginal HIV/AIDS awareness campaign poster (the earliest issues captioned USE FRENCHIES! instead of condoms). Originally conceived in 1987 by Aunty Gracelyn Smallwood and a small team of Aboriginal health workers in Townsville, Queensland, Condoman became one of the most successful Australian sexual health campaigns.
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Handbook of Australian Fungi
AU$1,500 Read MoreAdd to cartM. C. Cooke
London: Williams and Norgate for the Departments of Agriculture in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Hobarton, 1892.The first monograph on Australian fungi by English botanist and mycologist Mordecai Cubitt Cooke (1825-1914). Containing descriptions of 2079 species of macrofungi, microfungi, and slime moulds (or myxomycetes), of which 377 figures are illustrated across 36 plates. The samples which the handbook are based on were supplied by Ferdinand von Muller, Flora Martin, F. M. Bailey, Sven Berggren, and others, and shipped to Cooke in England. This distance limited the accuracy of the work, nevertheless, as the first volume devoted to the subject its historical import cannot be understated and remains a key work in any Australian mushroom collection.
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Listen, Little Man! A Document from the Archive of the Orgone Institute
AU$400 Read MoreAdd to cartWilhelm Reich; William Steig
New York: Orgone Institute Press, 1948.First edition in the English language of Reich’s antiauthoritarian classic calling for direct action by the working class. Translated by Theodore P. Wolfe. Illustrated by William Stieg. Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) was an Austro-Hungraian-American doctor and psychoanalys, and is one of psychiatry’s most radical figures. In the late 1950s many of his books were burned by order of the court in one of the largest cases of modern censorship making early editions of his work scarce.
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Homonopolis: The Most Gayotic Game
Read MoreStef de Knegt; Alexander M. Kroner
Amsterdam: Studio Fab / Identity Games International, 1994.Dutch Gay Monopoloy adaptation. Differing form the American Gay Monopoly published in 1983 (and much better rated according to Board Game Geek). In Homonopolis players travel around a triangular board cruising the gay bars and venues of Amsterdam. Instead of building houses and hotels players purchase barkeepers and backrooms. Jail is replaced with an SM Cellar where instead of Just Visiting you are Just Peeping Through the Glory Holes. Everything you might expect . The rulebook and the board are bilingual in Dutch and English. At 138 pages the book goes well beyond explaining the game, delving into the gay history of the Netherlands as well as an extensive directory of services, illustrated throughout by photographs of gay Amsterdam in the 1990s and with advertisements for a colourful assortment of local gay businesses that sponsored the production of the game.
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Songs of Central Australia
Read MoreT. G. H. Strehlow
Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1971.“The first complete account of the poetic heritage of the aboriginal people of Central Australia; an analysis of aboriginal songs as fully-developed oral literature, and their evaluation as authoritative documents of aboriginal religion” (from original prospectus). One of the scarcest and most sought after works on Aboriginal life. “You could describe it as the Torah of Central Australia.” (Barry Hill)
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The Bells and other Poems
Read MoreEdgar Allan Poe; Edmund Dulac
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1912.The deluxe edition of the poems of Edgar Allan Poe featuring The Bells, The Raven, and others. Illustrated with 28 tipped in colour plates and additional vignettes by Edmund Dulac and published in a numbered edition of 750 copies signed by Dulac.
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Expedition Antarctique Belge. Au Pays des Manchots: Recit du Voyage de la Belgica
Read MoreGeorges Lecointe
Bruxelles: Societe Belge de Libraire, 1904.Account of the captain of the RV Belgica, the second in command of the first Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897-1899. Considered the first expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, it was the first expedition to spend the entire winter in the region. Trapped in the ice for a year, they were ill prepared, the polar night driving a number of the crew mad and with scurvy setting in they were forced to subsist on penguin (largely considered inedible). Despite the challenges much scientific data was gathered including around 700 rock samples, for the first time meteorological observations were recorded for a full Antarctic year, and 188 new animal species were discovered. This superlative copy bound in full vellum with leather labels and decorative endpapers, and with a bound in manuscript letter dated 26 July 1904 from Lecointe to Madame Van Halteren requesting her to give the book to her daughter, Miss Van Halteren, signed by Lecointe, also with his monogram stamp and the stamp of the Royal Observatory of Belgium.
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Herbier de la France: Histoire des Champignons
AU$3,000 Read MoreAdd to cartPierre Bulliard; M. Walhein
Paris: Pierre Bulliard, No date.219 manuscript watercolour plates by M. Walhein, a Member of French Mycological Society, from the originals by French physician and botanist Jean Baptiste Francois Pierre Bulliard (1752-1793). Bound in quarter leather with a typescript index to the plates.
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Chemical Atlas; or, The Chemistry of Familiar Objects
AU$8,000 Read MoreAdd to cartEdward L. Youmans
New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1856.Exhibiting the General Principles of the Science in a Series of Beautifully Colored Diagrams, and Accompanied by Explanatory Essays, Embracing the Latest Views of the Subjects Illustrated. Edward Livingston Youmans (1821-1887) was an American scientific writer, editor, and lecturer, and founder of Popular Science magazine. Youmans’ Chemical Atlas is one of the 19th century’s pioneering publications of science popularization, with striking colour plates both conveying information and capturing the imagination, and was featured in the William Reese exhibition Stamped with a National Character: Nineteenth Century American Color Plate Books: “This chemistry textbook was a pioneering publication in the use of color to convey quantitative information”. There are recorded printings each year between 1854 and 1857. This 1856 edition being the third year of printing and from the collection of the renowned neurologist, author, and educator Dr. Oliver Sacks, with his bookplate laid in.
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The Mycophagists’ Book
AU$400 Read MoreAdd to cartPatricia Healy Evans
San Francisco: The Peregrine Press, 1951.A treatise on the cooking and eating of mushrooms. A fine American private press production limited to 175 copies. This copy inscribed by the author and the printer. VOLBRACHT 567.
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Woolloomooloo: Save The Loo Now
Read MoreBrenda Humble
Sydney: Inner Sydney Regional Council for Social Development, 1976.A record of the fight of residents and unions to preserve the working class residences of the Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo that came under threat by developers in the 1970s. Includes a photographic record of many buildings, as well as resident reflections, protest chants, organising posters, and newsclippings from the time.
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A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro
Read MoreAlfred R. Wallace
London: Reeve and Co., 1853.With an Account of the Native Tribes, and Observations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley. The rare first edition written from Wallace’s notes of his first fieldwork expedition to the Amazon, 1848-1852, his specimens and most of his work having been lost in a cargo fire on the return voyage.
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Blow Away the Morning Dew: An Autobiography of a Childhood in the Australian Bush
AU$550 Read MoreAdd to cartErnest Briggs
Brisbane: Ernest Briggs, 1967.The unpublished childhood memoir of Australian poet, broadcaster, and critic Ernest Briggs (1905-1967), prepared in Brisbane in 1967, the year of his death from myocardial infarction. The typescript offers a vivid first-hand account of early 20th-century life in rural New South Wales, particularly around Marsden Park and Riverstone, then bush settlements on Sydney’s north-western fringe. Laced with his verse and literary flourishes, Briggs recalls his early years in a cottage at Marsden Park, the death of his mother when he was three, and the following three years spent at the Ashfield Infants’ Home under the care of Matron Rebecca Marston. Returning home at six, a frail child excused from school by doctor’s order, he spent his days in his father’s bootmaking workshop at Riverstone or exploring the surrounding bush. Family reminiscences extend further back: his father’s recollections of childhood in Ballarat and Clunes, Victoria, and colonial family correspondence from the early to mid-nineteenth century, marking Briggs as a fifth-generation Australian. The memoir also recounts his reluctant return to schooling, the regular corporal punishment, and his growing sense of creative independence. Domestic scenes reveal the artistic atmosphere that shaped his imagination: “Once when a visitor had said, ‘Quite an art-showing you’ve got here, Charlie,’ my father walked around the room saying, ‘It comes of mixing with artists in my younger days … This is a Burket-Foster; here are a couple by the noted water-colourist Miss Allingham … this is by Uncle Tom Roberts, the first man in Australia to paint extensive oils…” Briggs also recalls excursions with his father into Sydney on public holidays, evocative tours of the city’s landmarks and recollections of its colonial past, as well as chance encounters with actress Nellie Stewart and, later, Dame Nellie Melba during his brief employment as a messenger-boy, moments that helped form his artistic sensibility. Other recollections include trips to Campbelltown, Windsor, Richmond, and Camperdown Cemetery, each described with a historian’s eye and a poet’s nostalgia. A richly detailed and intimate account of childhood, environment, and creative formation, this unpublished typescript provides valuable insight into Briggs’s literary development and into everyday colonial heritage in early twentieth-century New South Wales.
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Atlas des Champignons Comestibles et Veneneux de la France et des pays Circonvoisins
AU$2,500 Read MoreAdd to cartCharles Richon; Ernest Roze
Paris: Octave Doin, 1888.Atlas of edible and poisonous mushrooms of France and surrounding countries containing 72 color plates or figures of 229 types of the main species of mushrooms sought for food, and similar suspect or dangerous species with which they are confused drawn from nature with their reproductive organs amplified by Charles Richon… Accompanied by a monograph of these 229 species and a general history of edible and poisonous mushrooms by Ernest Roze… Text illustrated with 62 photoengravings of primitive drawings by old authors and organographic figures by recent authors after reproductions made by Charles Rolet. Key late 19th century work of French mycology. VOLBRACHT 1753. BITTING pg. 398. This copy with the bookplate of French mycologist Raymond Bertault.
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It Happened on the Flying Trapeze
Read More[TIJUANA BIBLE]
: No publisher, No date.An acrobatic MMF threesome performance. A Tijuana Bible is a short pornographic cartoon story booklet originating in the United States in the early 20th century produced by unknown artists and publishers up until the early 1960s. Also commonly called an eight-pager due to their near uniform page count these underground comics would often parody celebrities and well loved cartoon characters in short highly sexualised erotic escapades.
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Amazing Dope Tales Vol. 1 No. 1
Read More[Geoff Evans]
[San Francisco]: [Greg Shaw], 1967.One of the earliest comics to illustrate psychedelic drug use, predating ZAP and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers by a year. A dead beat Haight Ashbury dealer goes on a TV show that zaps him with 20 grams of DMT and blows his mind.
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BEV. Blad van Eva: de boom der vergetelheid afgerukt
AU$500 Read MoreAdd to cartLeonie Greefkens
Amsterdam: BEV, 1988-1989.A complete set of the 1980s Dutch erotic journal for heterosexual women. Edited by Leonie Greefkens with art design by Willem de Ridder, Paul Kooiker, Henk tur Kulve, and Maud Vink. Numerous contributors of erotic photography, text, and comics. This set has been collected and finely bound in vellum with the original wrappers and housed in a matching slipcase
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The Natural Principles of Landscape Gardening: or the Adornment of Land for Perpetual Beauty
AU$300 Read MoreAdd to cartJoseph Forsyth Johnson
Belfast: Arches & Sons, [1874].First published work of landscape architect, John Ruskin disciple, and Curator of the Belfast Royal Botanic Gardens Joseph Forsyth Johnson (1840-1906).
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The Bookplates of Norman Lindsay
Read MoreF. C. V. Lane
Adelaide: The Wakefield Press, 1944.One of 375 numbered copies with 18 tipped in examples of the bookplate work of Australian artist Norman Lindsay, with checklist and bibliography.
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The Smallest English Dictionary in the World
Read MoreDavid Bryce and Son
Glasgow: David Bryce and Son, No date.Bound in The Curio Shop, Sydney, wrappers and housed in a metal case with magnifying peephole.
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Myths and Legends of Torres Strait
Read MoreMargaret Lawrie
Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1970.More than 160 stories of the people of the Torres Strait, from 17 islands including Mua, Badu, Mabuiag, Saibai, Boigu, Masig, Ugar, Erub and Mer. They were collected by Margaret Lawrie as an act of preservation at the request of the Islanders themselves, and are here illustrated with photographs and artworks by the islanders. The name of each story-teller is recorded and the book is rich with explanatory notes. Included is a recording of 11 of the islands songs.
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Cydalise ou Le Peche Dans le Miroir
AU$500 Read MoreAdd to cart[Johannes Gros]; T. Mertens
[Dijon]: [Darantiere], No date.Cydalise, or Sin in the Mirror. With 8 etchings by T. Mertens, several depicting lesbianism, group sex, and one of spanking, all well executed. A high point of early 1930s French erotica. One of 600 numbered standard copies of the total edition of 700. The 100 deluxe copies with the etchings coloured. DUTEL 1331.
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Baby Douce Fille
AU$300 Read MoreAdd to cartSadie Blackeyes [Pierre Mac Orlan]; Louis Malteste
Paris: Collection des Orties Blanches, No date.Pierre Mac Orlan under his Sadie Blackeyes pseudonym for pornographic novels of sado-masochism and flagellation. A novel followed by some letters concerning the flagellation of women and girls. The Collection des Orties Blanches illustrated wrappers edition with 10 spanking illustration plates by Louis Malteste laid in.
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The Commonwealth Bank of Australia. A Brief History of its Establishment, Development and Service to the People of Australia and the British Empire under Sir Denison Miller
Read MoreC. C. Faulkner
Sydney: Commonwealth Bank, 1923.June 1st, 1912 – June 6th, 1923.
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Sun Bathers
Read MoreBertram Park; Yvonne Gregory
London: George Routledge & Sons, 1935.The second nudist / naturist volume from the English ‘Seen by the Camera’ series, a companion to The Beauty of the Female Form. An introduction by Alan Warwick followed by 48 photographs by the husband and wife photography team. Though the second such book in the series, it is credited as being the first book to directly link its intent to nudism.
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The Beauty of the Female Form
Read MoreBertram Park; Yvonne Gregory
London: George Routledge & Sons, 1934.First printing of the first nudist / naturist volume from the English ‘Seen by the Camera’ series, 48 photographs by the prolific husband and wife photography team. An introduction by the photographs followed by numerous critical annotations doing its best to put forward the seriousness of nude photographs and that such publications were for serious students of art and science, a long-held stance dropped in the second book of the series.