Picture Book 10 | Melbourne Rare Book Fair

Our Picture Book 10 celebrates the return of the Melbourne Rare Book Fair in fitting style. The cover illustrations are Scenes in the Bush of Australia, By A Squatter, Alexander Denistoun Lang. Published in 1847, in this very rare hand-coloured form it constitutes the first Victorian colour-plate book. It is in excellent company with the four parts of The Diggers & Diggings of Victoria as they are in 1855 by S.T. Gill (1856, in the original wrappers). If your taste in lithography is a little more gothic, you can’t go past The Demon McGuire (1872), a very rare early illustrated Australian children's book, in which a monstrous demon rampages through the streets of Sydney.

Literature is another strength. Stellar items include first editions of key works by T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land (1923), and Poems 1909-1925 (1925), as well as the deluxe edition of 1926, limited to a mere 85 signed copies. Our run of ten issues of The Little Review (1919-21) includes eight with instalments of the first appearance of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Beautiful editions from the famous Kelmscott, Eragny, and Ashendene private presses are present, along with Idyllia (1922, with five original Norman Lindsay etchings), a rarity from N.L. Press.

We hope you enjoy looking at Picture Book 10, replete with eye-catching books, manuscripts, photographs, artwork, and ephemera – and it won’t take you long to read it either!