Author: Irving, Washington.

Publisher: London: William Heinemann. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.

Format: Hardcover royal octavo, green cloth boards with gilt illustrations and text, green tinted edges, xii + 61pp + 51 tipped-in colour plates with tissue guards, 26.7 x 19cm.

First edition thus (1905), third impression.

An important publication from a technical aspect: Rackham’s Rip Van Winkle was one of the most notable early successes to utilise color-separated process printing to accurately reproduce colour artwork.

Scuffs to boards, shelfwear including minor warping to lower front corner, cloth splitting on extremities. Minor foxing throughout, one plate missing tissue guard.

Author: de la Motte Fouqué, Friedrich. Courtney, W.L. (translator).

Publisher: London: William Heinemann. New York: Doubleday Page & Co.

Format: Hardcover royal octavo, blue cloth boards with dark blue stamped text and illustration on cover and spine, illustrated endpapers, viii + 136pp, 15 tipped-in colour plates with tissue guards, 25.5 x 18.3cm.

Fifth impression of first edition (1909). Undine is a fairytale novella originally published in German in 1811, in which Undine, a water spirit, marries a knight named Huldbrand in order to gain a soul. The story was inspired by the works of the 15th century occultist Paracelsus, and had an immediate impact on the culture, inspiring numerous operas, ballets, and artworks in its wake. Ref: Wiki.

Minor soiling to boards, sporadic foxing throughout. Binding tight. Very Good.     

Author: France, Anatole. Wright, Peter (translator).

Publisher: London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.

Format: Hardcover octavo, maroon cloth boards with gilt text and illustrations by Robinson on spine and cover, top edge gilt and gilt decorated endpapers, x + 127pp, 17 laid-in plates, 23 x 16.5cm.

First English edition. Seventeen colour plates by Charles Robinson (British, 1870–1937), as well as several illustrated chapter heads and line illustrations throughout.

Anatole France (French, 1844–1924) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921. He is widely believed to be the model for Bergotte, the literary idol of the narrator Marcel in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.

Bee is a fairy-fantasy novel originally published in French in 1883. It follows the journey of two children into a fantastical realm with dwarfs and sylphs, where their destinies will unfold amidst challenges and magical wonder. Ref: Wiki/Gutenberg Project.

Split to upper rear spine hinge thus binding a bit shaky but holding, all plates except frontispiece lacking tissue guards. Covers scuffed and marked, spine head worn, minor foxing throughout.

Author: Blake, William. Maclagan, E.R.D. and Russell, A.G.B. (eds).

Publisher: London: A.H. Bullen.

Format: Hardcover royal octavo, brown cloth boards with quarter buckram spine, gilt text to cover and spine, xvii + 127pp, 26.2 x 19.5cm.

First edition. Printed by Chiswick Press, London.

Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion, is the longest and the most splendid of the Prophetical Books of Blake’s and was first published in 1804 in the form of one hundred pages of text and illustration. This edition represents the first printing in ordinary type, published explicitly with the intention of ease of scholarship.

Each man is in his Spectre’s power Untill the arrival of that hour When his Humanity awake And cast his Spectre into the Lake.

Splits, tears and soiling to head and tail of spine, rubbing and scuffing to boards, previous owner’s inscription in ink on flyleaf, and minor foxing throughout.      

Author: Wiggin, Kate Douglas; and Smith, Nora. A. (eds).

Publisher: New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Format: Hardcover octavo, black cloth boards with gilt text to spine, colour process lithograph pastedown on cover, decorative endpapers, 339pp, 12 colour plates, 24 x 18.3cm.

First edition thus. Ten classic stories illustrated in neo-classical style and vivid colour by Maxfield Parrish (American, 1870–1966).

Soiling to boards with paper loss to pastedown, previous owner’s inscription in ink on flyleaf, gutter cracked at front, some pages not “split” open.    

Author: Fitzgerald, Edward (translator).

Publisher: London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Format: Hardcover royal octavo, blue cloth boards with gilt peacock design and text, decorative pastedowns, unpaginated, 12 tipped-in plates with tissue guards, 25.3 x 19.5cm.

Presumed trade edition. A collection of poems presented as 110 quatrains, attributed to the Persian ‘astronomer poet’ and mathematician Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward Fitzgerald.

Rubbing, scuffing, bumping, and minor soiling to boards. Gift inscription in ink on flyleaf, foxing scattered throughout, one plate loose at rear.  

Author: Cabell, James Branch.

Publisher: London: John Lane and The Bodley Head Limited.

Format: Hardcover royal octavo, black cloth boards with gilt text and illustrations, illustrated endpapers, top edge red-tinted, deckled edges, xxi + 376pp, 12 photogravure plates with tissue guards, 24.6 x 16.1cm

First illustrated edition released the same year as the standard edition. Illustrated by Frank C. Papé (English, 1878–1972).

Something About Eve: A Comedy of Fig-Leaves is a satirical fantasy novel in twelve-parts about a would-be author who is fated to one day meet with a Sylan and exchange his body with that of the devil in order to dedicate himself to a life in pursuit of the divine arts.

Papé’s illustrations throughout the text and in the plates are a delight.

Slight rubbing to edges of boards, scuffing and minor insect damage to rear, bumping to corners, gutter cracked at rear, sporadic foxing to endpapers and throughout, one tissue guard loose.

Publisher: Cobyork Ltd t/a Sydney Gay Community Publishing, Darlinghurst, NSW.

Format: Three newspaper issues, 28–52pp, 43.5 x 29cm.

Issues are: No. 142, October 1990. No. 197, November 1992. No. 202, February 1993.

Founded as The Sydney Star in 1979 as “a contribution to the building of the gay movement and the growth of gay consciousness”, it was renamed the Sydney Star Observer in 1987 and became the political voice of Sydney’s LGBT community.

The Sydney Star Observer doubled its circulation from 9,427 in 1990 to 19,603 in 1993, as the AIDS crisis in Australia deepened, and pages became dedicated in memoriam sections.

The publication still exists today as the Star Observer and continues to function as an arm of political activism, party notifier, and observer of modern LGBT living.

Minor discolouration or tears to lower edge.

Publisher: Michael Glynn and The Sydney Star, Sydney, NSW.

Format: Fourteen newspaper issues, 16pp each, 42.5 x 29cm.

Issues included are: 1980–1981: Volume 2, numbers 1, 22, 24. 1981–1982: Volume 3, numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 17, 18, 21, 22. 1983: Volume 4, number 14.

The Sydney Star, later The Star, was launched in 1979 by Michael Glynn (1948–1996), an American who came to Sydney and developed the ethos ‘think gay, buy gay.’ Issues were published fortnightly as “a contribution to the building of the gay movement and the growth of gay consciousness.”

The paper became a gay business entertainment guide – covering parties, bath house events, and Mardi Gras – as well as a rallying political advocate and voice of the community when LGBT people were being actively pursued by the police pre-decriminalisation in 1984.

The Star covered issues such as police conduct at gay venues along Oxford Street, including raids and bashings by police officers (evidence later used by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission for an inquiry into the misconduct of police along Oxford Street); the campaign to decriminalise homosexuality in New South Wales, which was enacted on May 22, 1984; and the then spate of unsolved gay murders in Sydney, including that of Peter Parkes.

These issues fall three months short of the AIDS crisis taking hold in Australia, illustrating a “golden age of the gay/lesbian print media.” The first reported case of AIDS in Australia was published in the May 1983 issue of The Star. The last issue in this collection is dated February 11, 1983.

Michael Glynn died of AIDS-related complications in 1996, but the publication he founded still exists today as the Star Observer. His photographic archive is held with the City of Sydney.

Ref: Dominic O’Grady, Preaching to the Perverted: the life and times of Michael Glynn, 2013.

Minor tears to some edges.

The Sydney Star always had a section dedicated to Entertainment that contained a "Dance Top40" compiled by Steve Cribb, Michael Glynn's partner. As a celebration of what it might have felt like to go clubbing on Sydney's Oxford Street pre-AIDS, I've combed through each chart and added the highlights to the below playlist, for your pleasure.

Publisher: UBU Publications, Darlinghurst and Redfern, NSW.

Format: Four newspaper issues, ranging from 4pp to 16pp, 44 x 29cm.

Ubunews was formed from the UBU Films co-operative, Australia’s first self-consciously avant-garde film group founded by three Sydney University students: Albie Thoms, Aggy Read, and David Perry. It was the first ‘underground’ paper in Australia after OZ magazine folded.

UBU Films instigated an extensive network of Australia’s underground activity at a time when Australia’s cultural and political landscape was in transition, and the film group used Ubunews as “a propaganda sheet for the underground, & a weapon in UBU’s fight against censorship.”

The newsletter-come-magazine ran for only 16 issues, from 1968 to 1970. Their pages included upcoming film screenings and events, often involving UBU’s “lightshows”, record and film reviews, ads drawn by in-house artists, poster sheets, and guest columns.

Highlights –

No. 12: Underground music boom, showcasing Tully; history of UBU; catalogue of Sydney film-makers co-operative; a column by Timoth Leary.

No. 13: cover art by Martin Sharp; Canned Heat; Pact Theatre; Yoko Ononism, screenprint poster of Bob Hite [Canned Heat singer], screenprint poster for the Australian screening of Jonas Mekas’ The Brig; a description of UBU’s psychedelic lightshows.

No. 14: Nakedness nudity & raw flesh in underground movies; Peter Powditch; Len Lye; fashion poem by Robin Spence.

No. 15: Defeat Censorship; Thoms’ film Marinetti, Hair the musical.

Full set held in NLA.

Some minor tears to old folds, minor foxing to a few pages.