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Kimono textile advertisement. Large painted advertisement on linen for a kimono textile merchant. n.p. [earlyish 20th century?]. 137x72cm painting on linen. Au$750
This extravagant promotional piece shows three exquisitely dressed and coiffed ladies considering a bolt of fabric. The woman with her back to us is undoubtedly the crucial judge.
I hope my photos convey some of the extraordinary detail: from the hair to the gold embroidery to the red thread that holds the bolt together. What I can't capture properly is the textures that have been mysteriously imbued into what is a heavy linen. That purple kimono feels like velvet, while next to it the horizontal ribbing is accentuated. If a ground has been applied it's microscopically thin. Has some additive to the colour softened and smoothed the fabric?
The upper seal in the bottom left corner includes 'Yamada' but I'm lost after that. I think the lower seal can translate as 'mountain spirit'. Artist's name or establishment? I don't know. Any actual knowledge gratefully accepted.
Umeda Kyoka. 真正食パン製造法 : 機械不要 [Shinsei shokupan seizoho : Kikai Fuyo]. Tokyo, Ogawa Shoeido 1906 (Meiji 39). 17x9cm publisher's colour printed wrapper; 152,[2]pp and 14 pages publisher's list. A bit used, pretty good. Au$150
Authentic bread for the Japanese home; the subtitle assures us that no machine is required. This may not be the first Japanese bread recipe book. I found two other titles dated the same year - nothing earlier - which are more pamphlets than books. I couldn't find a copy of this.
As I understand it bread came with the Portugese but never got far from Nagasaki and was forgotten by the time the first bakers opened for business in the foreign settlement in Yokohama. Talk of bread made for Japanese troops in the 1840s is misleading. What was produced was hardtack and the same stuff is hailed as the first bread and the first biscuits.
Given a Japanese twist and an exotic (for westerners) filling bread became more confectionary than solid lump of daily staple and was on its way. By the beginning of the 20th century the flavours and fillings were going wild and we have this flush of recipe books. With this you can make a profusion of breads, sweet, savoury, and others that might be either or both.
Formulated in Hobart, improved in Tokyo
Governor Arthur's proclamation to the Tasmanian Aborigines. 頓智会雑誌 An improved version of Arthur's pictorial proclamation board in the magazine Tonchi Kyokai Zasshi, no. 40. Tokyo, Tonchikai August 1, 1891 (Meiji 24). 22x15cm publisher's colour lithograph wrapper (back wrapper with an old tape repair and a piece missing); three full page illustrations. Old stab marks indicate it was once bound with something else. sold
Arthur's 1829ish proclamation board was reproduced in lithography in 1866, misnamed Davey's proclamation 1816, and sold at the Melbourne Inter-Colonial Exhibition and at the Paris 1867 Universal Exhibition. Which explains how it found its way to Japan. The caption follows that 1816 date.
This follows the original all the way up to the unfair ending, where all is made more equitable: instead of whites executing blacks who have killed whites and whites who have killed blacks, the Aborigines can take their own revenge.
The Tonchi Kyokai Magazine was, I think, the first of Miyatake Gaikotsu's many, many papers and magazines. He became an unregenerate troublemaker after serving three years (plus remand time already spent) for lese majeste for a cartoon published in this magazine in March 1889. Ginko, the artist, did one year. Miyatake did four prison sentences and was a revered senior (senpai) of banned publications by 1927. His work had been banned 43 times.
Miyatake changed his given name to Gaikotsu - skeleton - and skeletons are all over the place in this magazine. It was a skeleton that got him into prison. He was in prison when this appeared and covers from this time have a recurring theme: the beautiful young woman visits the skeleton in prison; she dreams of him in prison, like this. I don't know if she is a particular woman, all beautiful women in general, or maybe all Japan.
Note the difference in humanness here between the Aboriginal dignitary and the white governor. The governor is more dog than human and I bet Miyatake was disappointed that he couldn't be charged with lese majeste in Tasmania. Tonchi Kyokai Zasshi translates as Journal of the Society of Ready Wit.
Copper engraving in Japan. 銅版画集 Two albums with some 328 Japanese copper engravings. [labelled dobangashu: copperplate print collection]. v.p. [Japan middle half of the c19th]. Two volumes 26x20cm titled by hand; 328 mounted engravings varying in size from matchbox size (ony a couple) to about 23x16cm. One volume has 208 6x8cm plates. Plates have been trimmed to their margins but not when they are captioned outside the image and bits of a few margins have been preserved saving some publishers' names. Some staining to the album paper in one volume but not the prints. I think the album with the small prints is younger than the plates. My guess is it dates from the end of the c19th or beginning of the c20th. Au$950
Foreign books of views, travel, and illustrated journals were ransacked to provide the curious with exotic scenes and people in the novel method of western engraving. Engraving on metal lingered until the end of the century for maps and views but lithography took over for mundane illustration.
Artists who had contacts with the Dutch, or through Dutch scholars began experimenting with etching and engraving early in the century and a series of small views of Japan by Okada Shuntosai appeared in the 1830s. Publisher's such as Gengendou, Eirandou, Shodeido, and Keigandou widened the market to grab a (dare I say, more crass?) public eager to see the whole, often wild and savage, world. Make it a series of separate prints and you have a collector by the throat. Even with that such a concentrated and extensive collection of these separately issued prints is not so common.
晴雨早見重法記 [Seiu Hayami Juhoki]. n.p. Tsuruokado Azusa 1869 (Meiji 2). 8x18cm publisher's yellow wrapper with title label; 20 leaves (40pp), 2 moving volvelles. A nice copy. sold
A very cute little almanac laying out when everything important is likely to happen. Printed, according a note at the very end, in an edition of 1000 copies. It was included in a collection of old almanacs in 2007 but I haven't found a record of this original anywhere.
Takarazuka. A collection of 112 bromide photo postcards of Takarazuka actors n.p. c1920 to 30. These were obviously in an album with corners which have somehow interacted with the photo surface and caused bleaching and marks to corners and edges. There are three or four plain photos, the rest are postcards. Four have writing on the back and two were stamped. These are dated 1920. Au$500
The Takarazuka, the all women theatre company, was founded in 1913, presented their first show in 1914, introduced the revue to Japan in 1927, and is now, as much of the world knows, huge. There is a mountain of stuff out there but there is a paucity of images and information from their first years. A collection like this - the number of postcard photos - makes it evident that there was a well established fandom and a fair industry in satisfying them by the twenties, but not so much seems to have survived.
Sketchy and gap-toothed lists of actors are extant but most have no accompanying portraits; similarly sketchy lists of productions survive but even fewer are accompanied by photographs. I went through 15 years of actors grouped by their first year assiduously collected on Takawiki expecting to find several examples of the same cards; I found one.
In later years actors became specialists, the otokoyaku play men, the musumeyaku play women, but our actors played men and women, Japanese and westerner, traditional and modern, gangster and empress. Nara Miyako, Kadota Ashiko and Ashihara Kuniko are identified; the rest are up to you. All are in costume and most are in action on stage.
Sudo Nansui. 一顰一笑 : 新粧之佳人 The Ladies of New Style [Ippen Isho : Shinso no Kajin]. Tokyo, Seibundo 1887 (Meiji 20). 19x13 publisher's colour lithograph boards and cloth spine; eight colour lithographs. Plates a bit browned; an outstanding copy in a chitsu case made by binder, writer and fastidious collector Atsuo Ikuta. sold
First edition of this novel of the future by an ardent reformer. It was reprinted in 1926 and 2008 in series of Meiji novels. The first part of the title translates as something like, a frown, a smile. It could be laugh but I doubt the young woman on the cover laughs much. A tremulous, wistful smile maybe. Our heroine is a milk maid, which means she is a highly educated proponent of dietary reform who reads Herbert Spencer for relaxation.
W.G. Aston in his History of Japanese Literature (1898) devotes a page and half to a patronising account of our book - almost more than all the other contemporary novels combined. He tells us that "among the incidents we have a balloon ascent, a contested election, and a dynamite explosion, which is prevented from doing harm by the sagacity of a dog of European breed." This shows he read it and I'd say measures his enjoyment but he doesn't want us to think he likes such lowbrow stuff: "Sudo's novels have the merit of being amusing, but I am bound to add that his own countrymen do not take him seriously. They rank him among third-class writers of fiction." Sour grapes if true; this was someone who apparently could make the first Japanese novel about insurance full of incident and excitement.
I didn't read enough of Aston to decide whether his perspicacity outweighs his right wallyism but this caught my eye in his section on modern drama: "It may be doubted, however, whether Shakespeare is a good model for a Japanese dramatist. His faults are those into which the latter is only too ready to fall. The study of the Greek or French classical drama would probably be more advantageous."
Donald Keene (Dawn to the West) is less patronising, a bit, and promises us enjoyment from the ludicrous moments: the prime minister's wife having an illicit tryst in a faulty balloon is his example. He chose Sudo as one of the two political novelists of that half decade leading up to the first parliament worth discussion.
An English woman's paradise
[CUFFE, William Ulick O'Connor]. The Earl of Desart. The Raid of the "Detrimental". Being the true history of the great disappearance of 1862; related by several of those implicated ... London, Pearson 1897. Octavo publisher's decorated cloth blocked in gilt and white. A hint of browning; quite good. Au$300
Only edition of this lively high society/South Seas/feminist/lost race fantasia which sees a clutch of England's finest damsels kidnapped by well bred wastrels and yachted away to a South Sea island. Soon they come across the less necessary half of a race, seemingly of Mediterranean origin, whose women leave all men between childhood and dotage on another island and visit once a year. Our aristocratic bandits discover that being British and useless is useless when young women can have their choice of good looking capable men. It's only short step to a polygamous queendom.
This seems to result in a mulitude of children. I suspect that Desart didn't think through the mechanics of woman run polygamy but perhaps I misjudge him. Without the usual British infant mortality rate there might not be an impossible number of kids.
This was, I think, Desart's last novel. I couldn't find much in the way of reviews but I am pleased to report that the Launceston Examiner thought it "a medley of puerilities." With a tough editor Desart might be still read today. He could write fluently and entertainingly but he did get side tracked easily, sometimes forgetting what novel he was writing. His Lord and Lady Piccadilly was racing into the last bend before the home straight when he abruptly introduced a horde of new characters and turned a tragedy into a social satire for a couple of hundred pages. And he is prone to letting his cynical authorial asides overwhelm a page.
Reincarnation in the Antarctic
MASTIN, John. The Immortal Light. London, Cassell 1907. Octavo publisher's cloth; frontispiece map. With the impressive English Rosicrucian Society bookplate and their catalogue number on the spine. A little browning around the ends and edges, a bright copy. on hold
First issue and hard to find. It reappeared with a Griffin title page and binding in 1909 which was, in turn, put in a Selfridge cover a decade or two later. Not a great publishing history, it seems. But the reviews weren't bad and it was bannered by Griffin in 1909 in tandem with his Through the Sun in an Airship and The Stolen Planet as having been accepted by His Majesty the King, accompanied by a quote from The Athenaeum's review telling us it was more daring than Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym. So Griffin had bought this, and The Stolen Planet (1906) from Welby, to team with their Through the Sun. All three ended up in Selfridge dustwrappers. Still, I can't think of any Antarctic fiction that was an immediate best seller.
This is a sci-fi Antarctic lost race thriller, starting with a ship built from Esdaile's self-heating steel. The first ultra-advanced race speaks Latin so it's lucky our four lost adventurers are properly educated scientists. I wondered whether anything other than the title made it essential for Rosicrucians to own and, yes, there is a barrier around the south pole protecting the secret of life which no human is yet fit to see. It takes hundreds, thousands of lifetimes to get there. Being British, they ignore that rule and all the following warnings and barriers until they are within sight of the pole. I gather that the creator of the universe is keen on electricity, maybe has an infinite subscription to Popular Science. Was Scott a Rosicrucian? was Amundsen?
Iehara Masanori & Shiozu Kanichiro. 学校必用 : 色図問答 [Gakko Hitsuyo : Irozu Mondo]. Kyoto, Wakabayashi Kisuke 1876 (Meiji 9). 21x15cm publisher's wrapper with title label; [2],40,[2]pp on 22 double folded leaves, two colour charts and small colour squares through the text, hand coloured. Owner's inscription on the wrappers and title page; stitching partly broken, used but pretty good for an old school book. Au$500
Western colour theory introduced to Japanese students. This was, according to one historian and repeated by others, first published in 1873 but I can't find any copy earlier than 1876. I have read that it is a copy of an American book by Marcius Willson but I think there is some confusion. Willson produced wall charts for American schools that were used in Japan and maybe in 1873 wall chart no. XIV was used. It was included in a version of the Shogaku Nyumon seies of elementary introductions in 1875, without the explanation we have here. His accompanying writings on color in his 'Manual of Information and Suggestions for Object Lessons' - the work cited - are nothing like this. In any case he seems to have borrowed Field's chromatics. So it was English colour theory that made its way into Japan first. I'd make a pretty confident bet that this is the first edition.
Colour. 実用色彩図 [Jitsuyo Shikisaizu]. Biku Shinkokai n.p. n.d. (Tokyo c1930?). 45x30cm hinged boards folding out to 120c45cm with mounted colour wheel and colour chips (9x8cm); cloth loops on the edge for hanging; in original card envelope with printed label (a bit torn at the ends). sold
A generous colour wall chart - with large, saturated sample chips - produced by the association for aesthetic education, an official body. I've come across some practical books for drawing, design, and art education in general published in the twenties to about 1940 but found no mention of this anywhere.
Which of these colour wheels turns backwards?
Colour. 図案用 : 色あはせ [Zuanyo : Iroawase] Tokyo, Meguro Shoten 1930 (Showa 5). Set of 36 numbered colour cards, 10x7cm, each with a cutout triangle and text on the back, a folded light card with shaped cutout and instructions, together in printed card folding envelope. A bit used; complete. sold
This spiffy little paper gadget helps you harmonise or contrast neckline layers and obi of your kimono. Still useful, I'd say, for modern layering.
Textile colours. G. Yamaguchi & Co. All Samples [cover title]. Osaka? 1935 (Showa 10: dated on the cover). 25x38cm cord tied album blocked in silver; a printed leaf at each end, a colour plate with a montage of trade marks and 11 card leaves (four folding) with between 10 and 35 mounted and framed fabric samples on each. sold
A large, elaborate album of the year's colours and ranges of cotton fabrics for clothing and household purposes. Some leaves have the colour trade mark for that range mounted.
Textile colours. G. Yamaguchi & Co. All Samples 2597 [cover title]. Osaka? 1937 (Imperial year 2597). 25x38cm cord tied album with stencil pattern; a printed leaf at each end and 15 card leaves (10 folding) with between 10 and 70 mounted and framed fabric samples on each. sold
A large, elaborate album of the year's colours and ranges of cotton fabrics for clothing and household purposes. The samples on the last leaf have damask patterns. Some leaves have the colour trade mark for that range mounted.
DYE, Daniel Sheets. A Grammar of Chinese Lattice. Harvard Univ Press 1937. Two volumes quarto, excellent in publisher's cloth and barely nicked dustwrappers; illustrated with some 2500 patterns. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series V. A pleasing pair. Au$750
First and best edition. A practical copybook and one of the great efforts of collection if not classification; the first on Chinese lattice the author thinks since 1631. The result of twenty years collecting, Dye called an end to his work with the death of his draughtsman Mr Yang Chi-shang in January 1936. He does comment that though there must be more examples he hasn't found, some three hundred patterns collected since 1933 but not included in this book contain no basic variants.
GILLISPIE, Charles Coulson [ed]. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. NY, Scribners 1981. Ten volumes quarto publisher's cloth. Signs of mild use, first couple of leaves of the first volume nibbled by silverfish. sold
The sixteen volumes republished in eight plus the two volumes of supplements. These are heavy. I think they might work out cheaper, pound for pound, than green beans at my local grocer.
FEZANDIE, Clement. Through the Earth. NY, Century 1898. Octavo publisher's illustrated cream cloth blocked in red and black; 15 plates by William Mackay. An outstanding copy. sold
First edition of this uncommon bit of science fiction set near the end of the 20th century describing the short-lived triumph of an expatriate American scentist in Australia who comes up with the idea of tunnelling from Australia to New York. One person, a plucky young Australian, made the maiden - the only - voyage from Australia to New York, just escaping a deluge of molten lava.
Noshigami. のし紙 A sample book of Noshigami - special paper for gifts - from the Kadoya Dyeing Workshop, Tokyo. Tokyo [1920s?]. 24x18cm, home made printed stiff wrappers; 105 leaves of colour printed samples on different kinds of paper, various sizes. Au$400
Noshi-gami is specially printed paper to be folded and attached to gifts as I understand it. The ineluctable beauty of some patterns is enhanced here, I say, by being in a quite smart cover decorated with locomotives.
FYNE, Neal. The Land of the Living Dead A narration of the perilous sojourn therein of George Cowper, mariner, in the year 1835. London, Drane [1897]. Octavo publisher's illustrated pale green cloth blocked in black (spine a bit browned); eight plates by E.A. Holloway. A rather good copy of a book that, like many of us, resents handling and aging. Inscribed and signed by Fyne. Au$1250
First edition; a South Seas lost race thriller and hardly utopian. A ruthless godlike figure holds the power of life and death over his subjects, exploiting a decent bit of scientific investigation by someone at sometime in a sinister and lethal Wizard of Oz (or perhaps certain churches?) bit of imposture.
A couple of experts have conjectured that Neal Fyne is a pseudonym since no other books appear under that name. But a pamphlet, I suspect poem, 'In the Middle Watch' by Neal Fyne appeared in 1891 and Drane advertised, in 1897, that ''The Fulfilment of the Prophecy and Other Stories by Neal Fyne, Author of "The Coffin Shop," "Land of the Living Dead," etc. etc.'' was in the press. This is not necessarily a lie; the press could well be the cupboard in the corner where dubious manuscripts were kept. Neither does it prove the pseudonym notion either way. The inscription here doesn't help: it shows only that Fyne was not giving anything away if that wasn't his name.
By the way, if you type the phrase "land of the living dead" into Trove's newspaper search you will find a 1945 letter describing Sydney suburb Artarmon as the land of the living dead.
Chiarini's Circus. Chiarini's Circus and Menagerie. Complete Congress of Wonders and Marvels. n.p. 1887 (Meiji 20). Lithograph(?) kawaraban style poster or handbill 27x35cm. Rather good. I find it hard to tell the difference between a woodcut and lithograph when they are unevenly inked and printed. Au$550
Chiarini's circus spent months in Japan in 1886 and 1887 and the Emperor saw his first circus. And being true royalty he was generous in his appreciation, not like a certain modern bunch who will reward with a handshake and have their accountant bill the nation for new gloves. Chiarini's was the circus for much of India, south east and east Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Latin and South America. They were indefatigable travellers.
I gather it was the scale of the spectacle, the horse riders and the animals that enraptured the Japanese; they already had plenty of great acrobats. I read somewhere that the first Japanese given official permission to leave the country were acrobats snapped up by the canny Richard Risley whose circus had been allowed into Japan in 1864 but no further than Yokohama. In this poster the stars are hard at work and are identified.
MILL, James. Elements of Political Economy. Second edition, revised and corrected. London, for Baldwin &c 1824. Octavo, untrimmed in original boards (spine quite chipped, remnants of printed label). A hint of browning, rather good. Neat contemporary inscription on front fly: Ditchling Library 679; and neat 1892 inscription of a Robert Turner on the title. Au$500
Heaps of changes and improvements writes Mill: "greater developement [sic] ... clearer proof ... more palpable ... rewritten ... more fully expounded ... cleared of some ambiguity ... a new section ...". It would hardly be surprising, then, that readers would dump their slipshod first edition in the bin the moment they unwrapped this.
BROWN, Charles Philip. A Dictionary, English and Telugu Explaining the English Idioms and Phrases in Telugu. Madras, printed at the Christian Knowledge Society's Press 1852. The half title is dated 1853. Thick octavo mid 20th century plain half calf; [4],8,xxx,1392pp. Binding separated from the text block. A variety of comparatively small flaws: two torn pages repaired without loss, another small repair elsewhere, a touch of bug nibbling of the first and last leaves; in all rather good.
The binding is not so handsome but it is fitting: a note on the front fly tells us the book was given to the LMS, Gooty in 1940 and rebound by the Gooty High School Press. Gooty is not far from Brown's longtime home in Cuddapah (Kadapa). In 1972 the book is given to St Andrews Hall Library or any Telugu speaking missionary, so it was likely in the neighbourhood for well over a century. Au$1250
The first English-Telugu dictionary. Its companion Telugu-English dictionary also appeared in 1852. A second edition appeared in 1903 and is still in print.
"Telugu literature was dying out, the flame was guttering in the socket," Brown wrote in his autobiography, so with proper unbalanced zealotry he maintained a private army of scribes and scholars with his meagre civil servant salary, collecting and transcribing manuscripts, putting in, he said, five hours each morning before he went off to work.
In case you are also baffled: the portrait of Brown on Wikipedia is not a picture of any human born in 1798. Maybe someone else can get them to correct it, I couldn't.
Roosevelt. A Japanese painted wood peg for hoops or quoits of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. [Japan 1930s?]. 28cm high, circular base 13cm diameter. Hat chipped on one side, a few small paint chips. His head turns. Au$350
Whoever painted this, the face at least, was pretty good with a brush. Getting a hoop over him demands that Roosevelt has to be slim but I've decided this is pre-war simply because I don't think Roosevelt would have so kindly treated and allowed into a fun game once war started.
Banking. 株式会社島原貯金銀行 : 支店開業広告 [Kabushikigaisha Shimabara Chokinginko : Shiten Kaigyo Kokoku]. n.p. [c1898] Colour lithograph 26x39cm. A nice copy. Au$300
This gentle, charming advertisement - hikifuda - announcing branch openings of the Shimabara Savings Bank is illustrated by two reassuring stories of rags to riches - or solid comfort at least. The Shimabara Bank was founded in 1891 and the Shimabara Savings Bank in 1897 but didn't live long thanks to some investment decisions by the Nakayama family - three Nakayamas including president Fumiko are listed among the directors.
Shimabara is in the Nagasaki prefecture and the two branches advertised are Arie - a town that was engulfed by Minamitakaki City - and Taira - which I can only trace as a railway station in a desolate looking area of Unzen, Nagasaki. Dates for month and day have been left blank.
WEALE, John [ed]. Ensamples of Railway Making; which, although not of English practice, are submitted, with practical illustrations, to the civil engineer and the British and Irish public. London, Architectural Library 1843. Octavo blindstamped cloth (a little worn at the tips); viii,xlii,64,xvi,101pp, litho frontispiece, two maps, 24 folding plates, two folding tables, one engraving in the text. A little misfolding and some browning and spotting but quite a good copy. Au$400
R.F. Isherwood supplies an extensive report on the Utica and Syracuse Railroad and E. Dobson likewise reports on the railways of Belgium. Railway building in England in the early 1840s was in poor shape and worse repute - depression and irrecoverable costs of construction being the main problems. The Utica and Syracuse railway is a salutary example of practical and economical building - it was built at a cost of £3,600 per mile whereas the average English railway cost £30,000 per mile. Some of the savings came from a patent excavator which is described and illustrated; more crucial was the use of timber bridges and much of this (and most of the plates) is devoted to various forms of these.
Railways in Ireland did not yet exist and Weale saw their necessity as almost a moral imperative: 'it is no less .. than the duty of the gentry, mercantile and trading classes, to encourage a full development of her energies .. as the best means of securing to that portion of the empire a share of advantages to which they are justly entitled, but which they have never yet enjoyed'.
Fireworks. 花火新伝事法 [Hanabi Shin Den Jiho]. n.p. [1865] (Keio 1). Manuscript in ink, 24x15cm cloth covered boards lettered by hand; 20 double page spreads 20x24cm mounted on card and framed with grey paper. Front margin wormed spreading into the top margin but barely into the framed sheets; last few leaves chomped in the gutter. None of this is as fatal as it sounds. On the back cover is another inscription dated 1886 (Meiji 19). Au$500
A very cool pyrotechnist's working book, even with the chewing, unlike anything else I've seen. Someone put in a fair bit of work to make a working book into an album. The title can be translated as New Methods of Fireworks. There are almost no published manuals of Japanese fireworks before the 20th century. Risho published a small book in 1825 and that is properly rare. Such information was occult knowledge, circulated in manuscript and passed from master to apprentice. I can't claim expertise but having seen a few 18th and 19th century fireworks manuscripts I am yet to see a second copy of any. It makes sense that every maker had their own method and styles and most every manuscript was peculiar to that.
Fireworks 星山流相圖書夜之業 [Hoshiyama-ryu aizusho yanogo?]. n.p. 1837 (Tenpo 8) Manuscript 23x16cm plain wrapper, 12 double leaves (ie 24 pages) plus five unbound double leaves and a single sheet with a carefully measured diagram; illustrations through the rest. Dated Tenpo 8 on what must be the last loose leaf with a red seal that I can't decipher. Au$250
Rocketry as weapon rather than fun, though firing off a rocket always has some element of fun. The loose leaves are clearly a continuation of the bound work - the first leaf has a repeat of most the title and we finish with a kind of colophon - but despite a few red numbers I can't swear they are complete.
BAKER, Richard.T. Cabinet Timbers of Australia. Sydney, Techn. Museum 1913. Oblong quarto publisher's cloth; 186pp. 68 colour plates, hundreds of photo illustrations. One corner a bit bumped but a rather good copy. Au$450
Still the bible of Australian timbers - it supplies colour plates of timber grains, properties and uses, illustrated by examples of cabinet work and interiors.
YOUNG, Rev. W. Report on the Condition of the Chinese Population in Victoria. Melbourne, Govt Printer 1868. Foolscap folio, stitched as issued; 30pp. Au$850
By 1868 the Chinese population of Victoria was on the wane - estimated at less than half of its peak at the height of the goldrush - but "vicious practices"were seemingly on the rise. Chief among these were, of course, gambling and opium but their by-products, larceny and robberies, were a growing threat. Young suggested that the decline or disbandment of Chinese Associations had a directly negative effect on crime and has provided a translation of the rules of an association to illustrate to the government the benefit of these associations to the community.
The first part of his report is both valuable and touching in that Chinese translators have provided statistics for each of the areas with Chinese communities; these statistics then are personal and idiosyncratic in their focus, providing the closest thing we have to a Chinese view of themselves at the time. Young includes a report by Dr Clendenning on the condition of Chinese lepers at Ballarat, and then finishes with his own report and suggestions for improvements, including the restitution of 'Headmen', the improvement of interpreters, education in English, Chinese police officers and so on. However, given the "abnormal condition of the great mass" (ie no women), in present circumstances it was best to encourage them to all go home.
Young was an LMS missionary to the Chinese, apparently of Scottish-Malay descent, who had served in Amoy before coming to Victoria in the mid fifties. The impression given by this report and other documents of the period is that he was one of very few non-Chinese in the colony that had any grasp of any Chinese language.
ALDEN, Winthrop. The Lost Million. New York, Dodd Mead 1913. Octavo publisher's green cloth with onlaid colour illustration. A couple of minute flaws to the onlay but an excellent, bright copy. Au$175
First edition. An obscure, uncommon and ripe thriller with mysterious adventurers - male and female, mysterious charges, mysterious threats, exotic strangers, and mysterious, exotic, threatening strangers, all surrounding an ancient Egyptian bronze cylinder which contains a deadly secret. Hubin denotes Winthrop Alden to be the pseudonym of a distinguished author but can't help more. Winthrop Alden was a character in Henry van Dyke's 'The Ruling Passion' (1901) but there are real people with the name.
GUNN, Dr David. [James Reid?] The Story of Lafsu Beg, the Camel Driver. As told to ... showing how he went to Australia, and what befel him there. Sydney &c, Geo. Robertson [1896]. Narrow octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper. Spine ends and corners chipped, a used but more than acceptable copy. No.2 of the Warrigal Series. Au$1250
Only edition of this rare novel which is, in it's own way, as lonely as a solo camel driver lost in the desert. A small book on Islam and camel drivers in Australia joined this in 1932 and then there is another empty expanse until modern histories and academic papers began to appear. All of these cite Lafsu Beg but I only found one that indicated that the writer had read it and no-one commented on how remarkable it's sympathetic treatment of Muslims was at a time of ferocious xenophobia and racism, even by Australian standards. Don't forget that "Australia for the white man" was on The Bulletin masthead until the 1960s.
David Gunn is as elusive as Lafsu Beg. He enters the records with this book and exits with a very short tale in the Sydney Mail in 1899. Morris Miller made it clear that Gunn was as fictional as Beg - the name is in quotes - and Nesbitt and Hadfield (Australian Literary Pseudonyms) give us the name James Reid with birthdate 1836. There my trail ran cold; I won't drag you down the dead ends.
This may not be the best copy but as it's the only copy in the wild I've seen I didn't wait for one better.
[William Harvey (or Harvie?) Christie]. A Love Story. By a Bushman. Sydney, G.W. Evans 1841. Octavo, two volumes bound together in contemporary half calf (front cover detached and most of the spine gone). An old repair to the title page, a bit foxed but pretty good; one leaf was creased while printing, not significant.
The author's daughter's copy but presented not by him but her husband, Charles Kemp of Kemp and Fairfax, printers of the book. It is inscribed "Stella Kemp, 1841. C.K." Au$4000
Only edition of this Sydney fiction incunabulum. The Australasian Chronicle (August 7 1841) gave this a lot of space, mostly due to the duty to "encourage the first blossoms of Australian literaure" and pads it out with lengthy quotes. The reviewer strives for kindness but in the end we're left with the notion that he was most impressed by an elegant two volume novel (price one guinea) being produced in Sydney. The Sydney Herald of the same date is equally generous with space padded by quotes, more generous about the author's ability, given a thoughtfully judicious approach. The reviewer protests a bit much that they know nothing about the author's identity; perhaps necessary as Kemp may well have written the review.
First into print were The Australian and The Sydney Gazette (both August 5) each with a one paragraph notice of the book in which more words praise the book's production than the writing. I didn't find a review in either paper.
The Port Phillip Gazette (October 2) is way less encouraging about the author's abilities but still devotes three quarters of a page, thanks to padding, to the book. At the end we learn that what is reviewed is volume one and I realised that none of the reviews suggest that volume two was opened and that no-one remarks on the Australian episodes. Nor does any reviewer mention the existence of another Australian novel - despite the notice in the Chronicle the day before their review telling us that this was the second novel from the Australian press and both were by the same author. The dutiful Port Phillip Gazeete did return with volume two (October 2) but it's hard to tell whether anyone but the typesetter read much of the book.
A writer to The Temperance Advocate (September 15 1841) wrote rapturously about the book but he hadn't read it and was under the impression that it was the first ever Australian novel. Forgivable, since the Advocate had said so on August 11. Word, at least, of the book had reached Hobart by the end of August but I found no review. I would have guessed that Hobart patriots rushed to refute Sydney's claim to the first novel. Not so.
Christie was a card carrying member of the when-in-doubt-kill-someone school. No-one has a good time from what I can see. H.M. Green condemned this as "rubbish" in passing, so passing that it wasn't worth indexing. You can find it on p280 of his History of Australian Literature. Green was furious about the amount of space given to our Love Story by Barton in his Literature in New South Wales (1866) but that may have more to do with it being Barton's first fiction entry and that he had read it. It's not a kind review.
This is maybe the only copy I've traced that wasn't a gift to someone valuable to his career.
TEALE, T. Pridgin, Dangers to Health: a pictorial guide to domestic sanitary defects. London, Churchill &c 1879. Octavo publisher's gilt decorated illustrated cloth (a touch mottled); 55 plates, all but a couple in black and blue, one in three colours. Minor signs of use, quite good. Au$475
First edition of this charming and terrifying pictorial guide to the perils of Victorian home life. Three more editions and French, German and Spanish translations (at least) followed over the next few years. I recommend this to anyone wanting to restore old houses with absolute authenticity. And it's essential for time travellers.
"Having further traced illness amongst my own patients to scandalous carelessness and gross dishonesty ... I became indignantly alive to the fact that very few houses are safe to live in." A still useful warning. Teale, third generation Leeds surgeon, like so many eminent Victorians, can only have achieved so much by working hundred and sixty hour weeks. There was a deluge of obituaries at his death in 1923, all eulogistic, but the note in the British Medical Journal caught my eye: he had an "almost feminine sweetness of disposition."
WORCESTER, G.R.G. [George Raleigh Gray]. The Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze. A study in Chinese nautical research. Shanghai, Dept of Customs 1947-48. Two volumes quarto publisher's green cloth (different grained cloth on each volume); numerous photo illustrations, measured drawings & plans, several folding. A nice, bright pair. Au$1600
Worcester was by no means the only civil servant in China, or any exotic foreign spot, to devote large slabs of their life to collecting, collating and preserving disappearing arts, crafts, languages and customs, but his books on junks and sampans are remarkable for being exhaustive and well timed. They are references that can never be obsolete, recording as they do dozens of now vanished vessel types - their design, construction, peculiar use and all manner of social and personal history of their owners and crews.
