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L’Enfer de Joseph Prudhomme savoir Deux Gougnottes et La Grisette et L’Etudiant
AU$2,500.00 Read MoreAdd to cart[Henry Monnier]; [Jean Dulac]
Paris: Sans la Permission Roy Louis Philippe, No date.Clandestine edition, circa 1929, illustrating Henry Monnier’s Prudhomme. One of 20 deluxe copies on Imperial Japan paper (from a total edition of 320), with the erotic plates in a second state in black and white with remarques, and an additional rejected plate not included with the standard issue. This is the first edition illustrated by Jean Dulac; a later edition with an entirely new suite of illustrations by Dulac was issued a few years afterward. DUTEL 1481. Finely bound by Henri Alix, with the original wrappers bound in.
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Fantastic Worlds: North Africa’s Magazine of Cinema Fantasy and the Unknown
AU$400.00 Read MoreAdd to cartDavid Soren
Cambridge, Mass.: Fantastic Worlds Magazine, [1972].Issue one of the horror and Hammer Films fanzine published by American archaeologist David Soren (1946-). “So one day we went to Hammer – we just walked right in a announced that we were publishers of a fanzine (fan magazine) about horror films in the U.S. and we asked for the addresses and phones numbers of David’s favorite Hammer stars so we could interview them – and we got them!! So for the next couple of years, whenever we were in London, we sought out and interviewed stars… To keep us honest, David had to actually produce the fanzine where these interviews were published, and so he wrote and distributed Fantastic Worlds Magazine, Issues 1 and 2, a real collector’s item today!” (Noelle Soren) Indeed rare, with only 1 holding recorded in OCLC, at the University of Georgia.
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Black & Gay: The Survey of Interracial Homosexual Practices
AU$400.00 Read MoreAdd to cartVictor Dodson
North Hollywood: Barclay House, 1969.Non-fiction sexological pulp being a survey of interracial homosexual practices by partner team Victor J. Banis and Sam Dodson. Banis was a highly influential gay fiction author and has been called “the godfather of modern popular gay fiction”. This copy signed by Banis to the title page.
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The Dog in Australasia
AU$1,000.00 Read MoreAdd to cartWalter Beilby
Melbourne: George Robertson and Company, 1897.The first Australian dog breeder’s manual. FERGUSON 6885.
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The Crisis by Eugene Field
AU$500.00 Read MoreAdd to cartEugene Field; [Colin B. Berckelman]
Athens [ie. Sydney]: The Vaginal Press, 1938.The vulgarity of the sexual slang in this scurrilous, pseudonymously published piece of verse would have been regarded in 1938 Australia as being at the very extremes of obscenity. Written and “hand-printed for subscribers only” by bibliophile Colin Berckelman in an (unsurprisingly) small edition of 25 copies, the publication can now be considered a genuine rarity: 11 of the 25 copies have found their way into public collections. Berckelman’s use of the non-de-plume Eugene Field is almost certainly an allusion to the late nineteenth century American writer of the same name who, aside from producing poetry for young readers, wrote The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac (1896). Berckelman, for reasons that were either genuine or perverse, evidently felt some affinity with Field. “On top, the pumping method; or lying on the side, Or spread upon her billowing bum, a-la the blushing bride, Or stand up, or sitting down, or resting on all four, Whereby the visitor could take his choice of either door, Or dressed, or naked,… every way her genius could invent To catch the silvery substance that tickleth as ’tis spent.”
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Le Marseille Curieux
AU$500.00 Read MoreAdd to cartPierre d’Agranon
Paris: L. d’Autrec, No date.The Curious Marseilles. Guide-Souvenir des Touristes et des Etrangers dans l’ancien Quartier Noble de Marseille Devenu Le Celebre Quartier Reserve. 1922 illustrated guide for sex tourists to the brothels of Marseille in the south of France. Copious illustrated with photographs of working women, a folding map of the area, and numerous advertisements.
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Mandatory Masquerade
AU$400.00 Read MoreAdd to cartTrina 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$14,000.00 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$2,500.00 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***.
AU$3,500.00 Read MoreAdd to cart[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$10,000.00 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$1,000.00 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$400.00 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$500.00 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$2,000.00 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
AU$3,250.00 Read MoreAdd to cartMary 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$2,000.00 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$1,000.00 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$6,000.00 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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Salome. Drame en un acte.
AU$4,000.00 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.