Rare books from Antipodean Books, Maps & Prints

Paris: Didot, 1761. First edition. A significant collection, which includes accounts of many early voyages. It includes accounts of all the principal early Australian voyages as well as an account of the discovery of Australia by the Dutch including Roggeveen's voyage to the Terres Australes (this features the great Bellin map with the hypothetical east coast of Australia.) "Particularly full accounts are given of the Dutch and the French voyages to the East Indies, voyages to China, and the British East India Company's voyages to India and Ceylon" (Hill). The Pacific voyages include those of Magellan, Schouten, and Le Maire, Drake, Sarmiento, Cavendish, Spilbergen, Narborough, Rogers, Cowley, Frezier, and Anson. Other world voyages include African voyages, the early Portuguese and English voyages to West Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, with a general account of the Dutch at the Cape. The set of 17 volumes includes the first 15 volumes and a general index numbered volume XVI, titled "Table… Read More

London: Stannard & Dixon, 7 Poland St, 1852. Otherwise very good condition. Tinted & hand colored lithograph of "The "America", which defeated 15 British yachts to bring the cup to the US, where it stayed for 132 years until Australia won it in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1983. This is the original engraving, not a later reprint. Image 13 3/4 x 11 1/2" on larger paper, original hand color, a little toned. Trimmed to within half an inch of the neat line and caption, laid down on period paper.

Chicago: Pascal Covici, 1928. Hardcover. Fine. Australian artist Norman Lindsay. 275pp, F + 9pp ills by Norman Lindsay. 1/2 cloth + dec. hardboard covers uncut foredge. Edgeworn dj o/w in excellent condition.

London: C. Cooke, 1789. 2nd or 3rd edition. Hardcover. Likely to be an original subscriber's copy, listed as "Wilson - Crown Court, Broad St.", likely to be "John Wilson" whose red gilt leather ownership label is mounted into the front board, with special blind tooled lines surrounding it. A second or third edition, published between 1789 & 1791, according to research by Alan Frost published in the LaTrobe Journal of the State Library of Victoria, No. 8, 1971. A very bright unsophisticated copy of this work, which has become increasingly scarce. Ferguson 59 describes a 1 volume edition & cites only the Mitchell Library copy. Many of the illustrations were derived from Cook's Voyages, and were the most generally available representations of the natives of the Pacific Northwest, Tasmania, New Zealand, Hawaii & the Pacific accessible to the public at the time. It is these contemporary images which make this work scarce as so many have been broken up. Folio. Frontispiece, title page, (verso blank),… Read More

Colchester, England: Oldham & Angle Photographers, 1870. Very good overall. Carte de visite showing the Australian General Tom Thumb, aka John David Armstrong who made his debut in Melbourne in 1870 and performed world wide. An uncommon image, with Tom Thumb standing next to an ornately carved chair and dresser, dressed in coat and tails and holding a sheaf of papers. The visit of the American Charles Stratton ("Tom Thumb") and his wife Lavinia, to Australia in the late 1860s as part of the PT Barnum round the world tour, resulted in a huge fascination with little people worldwide. With the title below the photograph. Text on the verso: "this photograph is from the studio of G. A. Graham, 8 Mersea Road. With photographers imprint: Oldham & Angle Photographers, 11 Queen St. & 8 Mersea Rd., Colchester". Below the stamp: "The higher class photographs only taken by Sydney B. Angle, 11 Queen St.". 2 1/2 x 4". Slt faded.

Boston: Printed by Isaiah Thomas and Ebenezer Andrews, Newbury Street, 1796. Third edition. Hardcover. Good +. Third edition, corrected and amended; the Introduction revised and amended by Samuel Webber. With 27 maps by Amos Doolittle, including many very early maps of individual states in the United States including New Hampshire and Vermont/ Maine, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; Massachusetts; Rhode Island and Connecticut; New York; New Jersey; Pennsylvania; Delaware and Maryland; North Western Territory; Virginia; Kentucky and Tennessee; North and South Carolina & Georgia. Also "The map of the World" (frontis piece to Part I), North America; Chart of the World, and maps around the world, as well as 1 plate, "Artificial Sphere". 2 volumes. Vol I: 808pp; Vol. II: 692pp. Modern binding, half tan leather and green gilt cloth, with gilt title at spines. Map of World strengthened on the verso. "J. Vanderbilt" signature at rear free end paper of Volume I. Scattered foxing throughout, including to… Read More

1914. Very good condition. The Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914-1917 is considered to be the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Conceived by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition was an attempt to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent. After Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition in 1911, this crossing remained, in Shackleton's words, the 'one great main object of Antarctic journeyings'.* Shackleton's expedition failed to accomplish this objective, but became recognized instead as an epic feat of endurance." Shackleton's ship "Endurance" was locked in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea, eventually crushed and sank, stranding its 28-man complement on the ice. After months in makeshift camps, the party took to the lifeboats to reach the inhospitable, uninhabited Elephant Island. Shackleton and five others then made an 800-mile (1,300 km) open-boat journey in the James Caird to reach South Georgia. From there, Shackleton was eventually able to… Read More

1914. Very good condition. The Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914-1917 is considered to be the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Conceived by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition was an attempt to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent. After Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition in 1911, this crossing remained, in Shackleton's words, the 'one great main object of Antarctic journeyings'.* Shackleton's expedition failed to accomplish this objective, but became recognized instead as an epic feat of endurance." Shackleton's ship "Endurance" was locked in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea, eventually crushed and sank, stranding its 28-man complement on the ice. After months in makeshift camps, the party took to the lifeboats to reach the inhospitable, uninhabited Elephant Island. Shackleton and five others then made an 800-mile (1,300 km) open-boat journey in the James Caird to reach South Georgia. From there, Shackleton was eventually able to… Read More

Sydney: John Sands Lith., 1884. Very good overall. Large chromolithograph of a new settler day-dreaming of his future country estate, while three aborigines peer in his rough shack, one attempting to steal his shot gun. "Presented with the Town & Country Journal, December, 1884" in the top margin above the print. William Macleod was an artist and businessman who became the joint owner of "The Bulletin" in 1887 with J.F. Archibald, and he was the Bulletin's manager or managing director for the next forty years. This painting received 2nd prize in the "Town and Country Journal" Art Competition, the 1st going to Julian R. Ashton. Laid down on cardboard, sml. corner watermarked otherwise in very good condition. 18 1/2 x 14 1/4" with margins. Not individually recorded in Trove.

Oxford & London: Talboys and Wheeler; W. Pickering, 1825. Hardcover. Fine. The Oxford English Classics series, Pickering edition. Eleven volumes complete, with the supplementary volumes, the tenth and eleventh volumes consisting of Johnson's retelling of the debates in Parliament for 'The Gentleman's Magazine'. Edited by the Oxford professor Francis Pearson Walesby. Fine binding, a beautiful full brown calf with gilt floral dentelles at front and rear boards; inner dentelles blind. The spine with raised bands, six gilt decorated compartments, and red and dark green leather title and volume number blocks. All edges marbled, end papers marbled, with the stamp "Bound by W. Nutt". A hint of scattered foxing otherwise a pristine set. Fleeman 87.3W/22a (vols. I-IX) and 87.3W/1.2/1a (vols. X-XI).

New York: The International Monthly, 1917. Hardcover. Bound volumes of every issue of 'The Fatherland', the New York periodical published and edited by propagandist George Sylvester Viereck (1884-1962) and Frederick Franklin Schrader (1857-1943). Viereck is noteworthy as the most influential propagandist for the German cause in America during both World Wars. The first 2 bound volumes are personal copies of Viereck's co-editor Frederick F. Schrader, with his name stamped in gilt at the front boards. The controversial weekly, as advertised on the cover of the first issue, advocated "Fair Play for Germany and Austria-Hungary". One issue with Schrader's annotation in pencil (Vol I No. 12). 'The Fatherland', launched August 10, 1914, received seed money from well-to-do German American New Yorkers, and quickly sold out the first edition of 10,000 copies. It expanded and set itself the goal of putting forward the German perspective on events in the war, exposing the wrongdoing of the Allied countries,… Read More

New York: Currier & Ives, 152 Nassau Street, 1862. Print. A patriotic image produced in the midst of the Civil War. The artist was Fannie Palmer, the renowned female artist at Currier & Ives, whose work is much sought after. To this day, this remains a splendid vista from West Point, looking from Trophy Point up the Hudson River, with cannons in the foreground, with the caption "Brass Mortars, taken in the Mexican War". Across the river is Constitution Island , Cold Spring and the West Point Foundry in the distance. The Hudson is a busy waterway, with a steamboat flying the US flag, full of schooners and other sailing craft. Printed area 15 3/4 x 12 1/2" with ample margins. A bit toned overall, original color later heightened. Conningham 2972.

London: J. Johnson, 72, St. Paul's Churchyard, 1808. Third edition, Corrected. Wonderful association with the Edgeworth family. Inscribed at the top of the title page by Maria Edgeworth "Mrs. Charlotte Sneyd from the authors - in stead of one which they stole from her when she was absent at Ross-------" . Association copy with Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) the famed children's author, educationist & feminist. She was the daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Anna Maria Elers. Her mother died young in 1773 and her father Richard married second Honora Sneyd (1751-1780). This was the beginning of a lifetime's assocation with the Sneyd family. Honora had been brought up by Seward family, beloved by Anna Seward (the author) and briefly engaged to John Andre. When Honora died in 1780, Richard married her sister Elizabeth. At Elizabeth's death in 1797, Richard m. 4 Frances Anne Beaufort, who was a year younger than Maria. Maria at first objected to Frances but they became intimate friends. "For fifty-one… Read More

Egypt: Antoine Beato, 1870. Twenty-seven (27) original photographs of Egypt, with carefully handwritten descriptions below each plate; photographed by Antoine Beato; (8) of the images have his signature in the plate. Large format, photo size approx. 10 ¼" x 15" (26.25 x 38 cm); the mounts 14" x 18" each on its own guard. Including: Gizeh: The Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Kheops (2); Karnak: Avenue of the Sphinx; Esneh: Capitals; Edfu: Hypostyle Hall; Edfu: Gallery of the Temple; Edfu: Gallery and Entrance to the Temple; Kom Ombro: Ptolomey before the God Sevick; Kom Ombro: Ptolomey before the Horus; Kom Ombo: The two Cleopatras and Ptolomey; Kom Ombo: Coronation of Ptolomey; The Reservoir at the Great Cataract; Western View; The Kiosk (2); Philae: The Pylons and Colonnades of the Temple of Iris; Colonnades of the Temple of Iris; Gallery of the Temple; Gallery with bas relief; Gallery with entrance to the Temple; Gallery of the Temple; Philae: Hypostyle Hall (2); Philae: Pylon with bas relief of… Read More

Cambridge Mass, 1950. Very good overall. A manuscript letter written and signed by Frost to Donald J. Paquette who also signs the verso in ink and adds in type "My first letter from Robert Frost..." Paquette was a noted collector of literature and autographs. In this letter Frost responds to a Paquette request for copies of his first edition books. "I am a simple man, too simple in fact to be more than an onlooker at this competition for my first editions. I have kept none for myself. And I am afraid that this late in the game you won't find any at "a reasonable price." He recommends that Paquette contact Mr. Bohn of "House of Books". Failing that, Frost says he can probably find a photo to hang up. He supplies a rather lovely image of Frost in an armchair with his dog. 11 x 8.5" folded to 5.5 x 8.5", original fold, signs of glued paper on verso.