Werewolf

Street Kamishibai. Yodogawa Manpo & Kahi Ryuji? 狼男 : 3巻 [and] 4巻 [Okami Otoko : 3 kan ... 4 kan]. np. Sadamusha? 195-? Each episode has ten handpainted and varnished sheets on heavy boards, 26x36cm. Text handwritten on the back. These have been wet along the right edge and there is damage. Stamps of the Osaka and Nagoya kamishibai ethics committees, which my informant speculates were self proclaimed entities that existed nowhere other than as stamps on a handful of stories. Au$750

If you've looked at published kamishibai and wondered how it could ever have been popular ... it wasn't. The published stuff was almost all heavy handed propaganda and improving drivel produced without any artistic skill or imagination by government and education agencies and pressed on children in schools. Real street kamishibai was produced by hand by the kamishibai men themselves or by associations - such as the Sadamusha - that acted more or less as lending libraries. Which is not to say that a hell of a lot of street kamishibai wouldn't be described kindly as 'naive'. But enough had to be compelling to bring and keep audiences. Specially through hundreds of episodes, which some stories ran for.
Kamishibai was not long lived. It was more or less born with cinema and died with television, and the greatest works, as far as they have survived, were produced toward the end, during the occupation after the war. The connection to film serials is inescapable of course but kamishibai is not burdened with technical restraints. If you can imagine it, you can draw it and you can tell the story.

Here are two complete episodes of Okami Otoko which translates as werewolf or wolfman. It is, I'm told, the revenge tale of Yagi Harusaku, a one legged man who turns werewolf at full moon. Unfortunately, without an episode showing that I don't know whether he's still a leg short in wolf form. I wonder whether anyone living knows the whole story. As far as I can figure, when the kamishibai industry ground to a halt the kamishibai men just packed away, or threw away, whatever episodes they had. If a large hunk of a story or, something I've never seen, a whole story was held by the association you can be sure it was dull, rarely wanted.
Kamishibai are public stories usually told by kamishibai men who set up a folding stand on the back of their bicycles and acted the dramas illustrated on the cards. With the plates in order, the text for the first picture is on the back of the last. The sheets are transferred to the back as the story continues; the text for the second picture is on the back of the first, and so on.

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Carpentry. Hiroka Yasanori. 番匠町家雛形 [Banjo Machiya Hinagata]. Nihonbashi (Tokyo), Suharaya Mohei 1770 (Meiwa 7). Two volumes 26x18cm publisher's wrappers with title labels (a bit nibbled); diagrams and working drawings. Some worming but nothing too serious. Au$165

A pattern book for house framing, rooves and so on.
I've wondered who these early building manuals were for. Not just in Japan; in England and Europe I think they were for owners and architects - once such a thing existed - to get some idea how how a building was constructed. In Tokugawa Japan, where control of the building trade was fiercely held by one or two families and the master carpenter was the architect, why were they published? Were they text books to be used within the family and guilds - by senior craftsmen who could read? Or were they spoilers by would be competitors trying break the stranglehold on trade secrets.
Most surviving copies of these pattern books are grimy wrecks which suggests either apprentices or tradesmen fairly low on the pecking order used them but did books for actual working people exist in the west or east at this time? What need was there for a man with saw, mallet and chisel to know how to lay out a complex roof? Titles usually state they are for master craftsmen but what need of them did they have? Building regulations changed suprisingly often from the middle of the 17th century onwards - which is when these books began to proliferate - so were they to brush up on the latest standards? When there's a fifty year gap between the first and second edition? That's what edicts are for. There must be studies of the books and their purpose but I'm yet to find anything in English.

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Carpentry. Suzuki Shigeharu. 大匠手鑑 [Taisho Tekagami]. Nihonbashi (Tokyo), Suharaya Mohei 1764 (Horeki 14). Four volumes 27x18cm publisher's wrappers with title labels; a couple of diagrams in the first volume, illustrations and working drawings throughout the rest. A touch of worming; pretty good. Au$200

Probably first published in 1721; I found no editions between that and this one and then no more until the 1980s. A pattern book for shrine or temple carpenter/builders which seems to start with site - the first diagram explains points of the compass - and goes through framing and rooves to interior shelves and carving designs.

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Sonata in blue?

Kimono design. Shirokiyagofukuten? 蘆手応用模様 [Ashi-te Oyo Moyo?]. n.p. [191-?]. 59x42cm limp cloth with brushed title label; 30 original colour designs in gouache. A working book and pretty good for such a thing. Au$2000

A giant (comparatively) early 20th century set of finished designs for a pattern book, by the look of them, but certainly used before they were made into this book. Offsetting shows that some of them were not neighbours originally but they have all been numbered one to thirty and some captions or annotations added at much the same time as they were painted. The subtitle above the main title translates more or less as 'pending designs'.
On the back cover is written Shirokiyagofukuten which was an Edo/Tokyo kimono seller, haberdashery, department store for about three hundred years until it petered out in the 1960s. These plant based designs, though, and the pattern books which came from designs like this - like the one just below - are much more Kyoto than Tokyo.

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Kimono design. Kyoto Koekai Design Department. 登美草 [Tomikusa]. Kyoto, Torii Saikodo 1915 (Taisho 4). 55x39cm cord tied publisher's patterned boards with title label; 52 leaves: one leaf of text, 50 colour lithograph plates, one leaf with colophon. Some wear to edges and marks on the covers, minor signs of use inside; pretty good. The numbering gets a bit confusing after plate 30 but the total agrees with the NDL entry. Au$850

Forget the quality, feel the size. Is this the largest kimono pattern book ever published? Feel the quality anyway; this is a high class production. Worldcat finds the NDL entry but CiNii comes up empty.

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SLEE, Richard & Cornelia Atwood PRATT. Dr. Berkeley's Discovery. NY, Putnams 1899. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in gilt, black and white. Minor signs of use; rather good. Au$385

Only edition, I believe, of this sci-fi murder mystery thriller. The single minded American scientist somehow wins a gorgeous young French wife and still can't stay away from the lab. He is begged to put his earth shattering new discovery to work in solving a brutal murder and discovers that the piece of brain he has grafted into an ape, cultured, sliced up and is recovering images from the memory cells is his wife's.

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CLEGG, Thomas Bailey. The Bishop's Scapegoat. Londo, John Lane 1908. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in gilt black and cream. Minor signs of use, a bit canted; quite good. Au$350

First, probably only, edition of Ballarat bred Clegg's thriller murder melodrama mostly set in New Caledonia. Clegg was a journalist, lawyer and magistrate who in the eighties had investigated the penal system in New Caledonia and the indentured labour industry in Queensland. The cane fields found their way into his 1907 novel 'The Wilderness' and New Caledonian prisoners into this.
It may be a spoiler but I'll tell you anyway: the men on the front cover are the Bishop of Capricornia who murdered his brother-in-law in Paris and the Frenchman sentenced for that murder. But rest easy, there is a twist.

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GRIFFITH, George. Brothers of the Chain. London, White 1900. Octavo publisher's grained cloth blocked in gilt and black. A rather good, bright copy of a book that usually hasn't aged gracefully. Au$325

First edition, second issue with a cancel title; copies are known to exist with the title dated 1899, but not many. The colonial edition though is dated 1899. One of Griffith's baroque thrillers of particular interest to us in the Pacific. "In the triple-walled fastness of the Central Prison on Ile Nou, in New Caledonia there exists, so those who should know, say, the head centre of the most mysterious and the most terrible secret society in which men, or rather fiends in human form, ever bound themselves together." This is not from the novel but from Griffin's Pearson's Weekly article - Griffin building a buttress of supposed fact to support his fiction. The book itself leaps around the world, from Park Lane and Paris to the seas off north Australia and New Caledonia.
Trove finds only one copy, in the Ron Graham collection at Sydney University. His non-fiction follow-up on the convicts of New Caledonia, In an Unknown Prison Land (1901), is well represented.

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Educational fan leaf. 大日本諸国繁栄録見 [Dai Nihon Shokoku Han'ei Roku Mi]? n.p. [c1870?]. Engraved fan leaf 25x51cm overall. Pleated but intact, with a matching blank sheet which presumably was meant for the other side of the fan. sold

Engraved educational fans seem to have been all the rage at the beginning of the Meiji. A whole population faced with a mountain of new information, new ways of doing things and new ways of thinking, needed all the help they could get and an education you could hold, keep in your sleeve and even cool your overheating brain with seems a good idea to me. This one is fairly parochial with what I think is the wealth of areas and cities of Japan and views of Kumamoto and Nagoya castles.

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SAMUELS, Lieut. Edmond. An Illustrated Diary of Australian Internment Camps. By an Australian officer of the guard. Sydney, Tyrrells [1919]. Small quarto publisher's illustrated wrapper; 52pp, numerous photo illustrations. A rather good copy. Au$300

The Michelin guide to Australia's concentration camps. For the privileged internee the Belle Epoque did not end with the outbreak of war and their imprisonment. Samuels reviews Holdsworthy: "dozens of small cafes ... several theatres ... picture shows ... gymnastic halls, massage chambers, hot baths ... "; Trial Bay: "the finest tennis courts I have ever seen ... surfing, fishing, boating ... a concentration camp that undoubtedly must be one of the most comfortable in the world"; and Berrima: "a charming site for a concentration camp ... the best concentration camp to be found anywhere," where the internees built "rest houses" along the river bank and marvellous boats: hydroplanes, seaplanes, gondolas, submarines, steam tugs and a zeppelin. At the end of a parade of these boats a submarine attacked a boat which was "set alight and sunk, and the occupants swam to shore." The delights and privileges of being a prisoner of Australia, or more correctly a privileged prisoner of Australia. One captain drew £300 a month and even the drag for the carnival was unstinted: "Many were dressed in female clothes, carefully decked out ... even to wigs and expensive underwear". This may be unrelated to the "keen friendliness shown by many Australian girls who were visitors".
I'm not sure whether Samuels was the scribbling pharmacist or the pharmaceuting scribbler. Following this debut book he penned some hit pop songs of the twenties, apparently had his musical produced in London by the distasteful Lord Sempill in 1935, knocked out a novel or two, some verse, and mopped it all up with his autobiography in 1972. His Sydney pharmacy, in Castlereagh Street, was touted as the haunt of visiting stars.

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Kimishima Ryuzo. 花ことば双六 [Hanakotoba Sugoroku]. Shin Shojo 1918 (Taisho 7). 55x40cm colour broadside. Rather good. Au$200

This decorative but not always gentle sugoroku about the meaning of flowers was the new year gift for 1918 from the magazine Shin Shojo - New Girl. There is too much pain and misery here for me; a tough bunch these new girls.

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Motomatsu Goro. 漫画廣告創作集 [Manga Kokoku Sosakushu]. Tokyo, Seishindo 1928 (Showa 3). 27x20cm publisher's cloth decorated in pink & gilt, printed card slipcase (marked); [2],204pp, profusely illustrated in black & white plus seven colour plates. A little offsetting; a nice copy of a book that invites continual thumbing. Au$650

Manga in advertising. A delight.

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HADDON, A.C. & James HORNELL. Canoes of Oceania. Honolulu, Bishop Museum 1936-37-38. Three volumes large octavo publisher's printed wrappers; numerous photo illustrations and line drawings throughout. An excellent set. Au$1750

Hard to find complete in such good shape, this is the definitive work. I: The Canoes of Polynesia, Fiji, and Micronesia by Hornell; II: The canoes of Melanesia, Queensland by Haddon; III: Definition of Terms, General Survey, and Conclusions by both.

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Sugoroku. 南方資源一周双六 [Nanpo Shigen Isshu Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shokokumin Shimbun 1943 (Showa 18). 38x53cm colour printed map game. On the other side is a page of manga and a page of text printed in blue. Paper less browned than expected, top edge a little chipped, other signs of use but a most acceptable copy. sold

Way back in my innocent, heedless youth when every day brought new and exciting sugoroku - so it seemed - I saw a copy of this and decided to wait for a better copy. This might be a better copy, I don't remember that first one. In between I saw one that was waste paper. Now that I know this came in a kids' wartime newspaper I'm relieved I didn't wait for one better than this. I doubt I'll live to see that.
This quite deluxe (for a newspaper) game was the new year gift from the Shokokumin Shimbun which I think was a satellite of the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun which was, this same year, merged with the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun to become the Mainichi Shimbun. It is a light hearted, manga decorated tour of Japan's southern resources which included Darwin - home to sheep and bipedal sheep dogs - and the edge of India - home to cobras of course. From the bottom margin a deft child could cut out and paste together two small ships for playing pieces.

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ROCK, Gilbert. [ie John Alexander Barr]. Colonists. Illustrating goldfields and city life in Australia between 1851 and 1870. Dunedin, Wilkie & Co 1888. Octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper; 152pp. Staple stains and minor signs of use; a rather good copy. Au$800

A later issue of the first edition of this rare thriller - the wrapper illustration is dated 1906. A lousy title but replete with murder, revenge, conspiracy ... and I'm only reading from the chapter titles. The misleading title no doubt helped this being well represented in Australian libraries and led to Ferguson recording it, cementing its rarity now. This was published in London, Toronto and in New York (in the Magnet Detective Library) as The Mystery of Golden Gully which barely exist in libraries. Gilbert Rock was missed by Loder.
Barr published a few novels all in a rush, including two thrillers under the name Gilbert Rock and his lost race thriller Mihawhenua under the name Brock but his own story is perhaps more exciting. A Dunedin lawyer, he petitioned in 1888 for a protective tax on all imported literature, assuring the government that he was "prepared to supply the colonial market with literature if inducement offers." All his known novels then appeared by November.
Soon after he did 'the Pacific Slope' (a great term I hadn't heard before), abandoning his family and absconding with many thousands of his clients' pounds either lost or in his pocket. Here Barr vanishes from view except for a startling piece in the Auckland Star of October 1 1894 in which is mentioned a letter just received by Sir George Grey from the author of Mihawhenua with a return address but an indecipherable signature. No-one could decipher the signature so Grey's secretary cut the signature from the letter and pasted it onto the reply. No connection was made between the author of Mihawhenua and the missing lawyer. A final glimpse is a London death notice in 1907 which identifies him as a former solicitor of Dunedin and tells us he has been living in England with his wife and family for five or six years. I guess it was the same family. So, it it a coincidence that this was reissued at about the time that news of his death reached Wilkie & Co?
The dedication, to the colonial press in "grateful acknowledgment," of his thriller, By Passion Driven, was declined on conscientious grounds by the Christchurch Telegraph who said, "What object Mr Gilbert Rock could have had we do not know". Perhaps his dedication was for The Daily Telegraph who described his Colonists as "not a badly told story".

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WALSH, M.C. The Golden Idol. A tale of adventure in Australia and New Zealand. Chicago, Donahue Henneberry 1891. Octavo, very good in publisher's green cloth stamped in blind; frontispiece. Au$450

Only edition it seems, though there is nothing American about this book except the imprint. Classed as a lost race novel but this race is so thoroughly lost they don't make an appearance; it's their treasure that is hunted and all we meet are some anonymous dusky savages.
I suspect Walsh was a bit of a sook:- "As Holcroft had an exceedingly bad headache, they did not travel fast ... the constant roar of the rushing water had given Rex and Holcroft bad headaches ... they were soon chilled through, and as a matter of course their sufferings were severe ... Holcroft suffered much from rheumatism ... for the nights were exceedingly cold ... Holcroft began to feel a touch of the fever ... but fortunately Hawley happened to have some of the Elixer of Yucca ...". A tale of adventure in Hypochondria I think. Still, there are plenty of thrills, a murder, a wicked conspiracy and the lost finally re-united.

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Okano Sakae 少年飛行雙六 [Shonen Hiko Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shonen Sekai 1912 (Meiji 45). Colour broadside 55x79cm. With some short tears around edges and along folds repaired. Pretty good. Au$400

This delightful illustrated journal of a boy's flying adventures was the new year gift from the boy's magazine Shonen Sekai. It's on a waxy paper that may have seemed a good idea when new but does not handle handling so well. This is very much the best copy I've seen so far, not that I've seen many.
Okano Sakae was one of the generation of artists who came through the western painting department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts at the beginning of the century, later a pupil of Kuroda Seiki, and collaborator with fellow Hakubakai students on the five volume Nihon Meisho Shasei Kiko.

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CHAMBLESS, Edgar. Roadtown. NY, Roadtown Press [1910]. Octavo publisher's cloth blocked in white with an onlaid colour illustration; [6],172pp. A little flaking of the white blocking, an excellent copy. Au$750

The deluxe issue: for an extra ten cents ($1.35 against $1.25 for plain) you could buy this with the cover illustration hand coloured. Now one of the more arcane and elusive utopian schemes for a new kind of city, leading to a new society. Roadtown is a ribbon, the extreme lineal city. At the bottom, underground, is the railway - noiseless and smokeless - above come housing, work and communal areas - each home with its own plot of land - and at the top is a promenade. In short the perfect blend of the virtues of city and country.
What surprises from this distance is how much apparently sensible support Chambless garnered. Construction was to be prefabricated concrete and Edison donated his patents; transport was by monorail and Boyes donated his patents; there was a pretty impressive list of people lending their efforts, both practical and rhetorical. Ten mile stretches of experimental or exhibition Roadtown seemed likely, even imminent, for years but Chambless beavered away at Roadtown for almost forty years, until his death in 1936, to wind up virtually forgotten.

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Wada Sanzo. 色名総鑑 [Shikimei Sokan]. Tokyo, Shunjusha 1931 (Showa 6). 20x12cm publisher's cloth case with title label with 160 mounted colour samples on 56 accordian folding card leaves; and wrappered book; 178pp and some tables (two folding). The usual offsetting of the card and still a nice enough copy in the original printed card outer folding case (this with a chipped spine repaired on the inner hinges). Colour samples named in Japanese, English and occasionally French or German; two of the tables are multi language lists of colour names. The top edge of the colour cards are gilded and the apparently plain paper lining of the case has a pattern of transparent glazed shapes printed on it. Au$650

First edition of Wada's first serious attempt at colour nomenclature. Wada, though at the top of the art ladder in Japan, insisted on pursuing new directions and founded the Japan Standard Color Association, now the Japan Color Research Institute, in 1927. In these early years science, art and aesthetics went hand in hand.

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Wada Sanzo. 色名総鑑 (増訂版) [Shikimei Sokan (Zoteiban)]. Tokyo, Hakubisha 1935 (Showa 10). 19x11mm publisher's cloth case with 171 mounted colour samples on 57 accordian folding leaves; and card bound book; 182,8pp and a folding table. Colour samples named in Japanese, English and occasionally French or German; table of multi language lists of colour names. A nice copy in publisher's printed card case. sold

Second edition, enlarged and revised, of Wada's first serious attempt at colour nomenclature published in 1931. I can tell you there are a few more pages and eleven more colour chips in this edition. There seem to be significant changes in the text volume but I can't read them. Several colours have changed - that is the hue, tint or shade, not the name - and seem to this untrained eye to accord better with their names, though I would still pick an argument with his 'fawn'.

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For Neo-Japanese

Miwa Takehisa. スラングと進駐軍略語集 [Surangu to Shinchugun Ryakugoshu] Neo-Practical English Series for Neo-Japanese [cover title: New Words and Essential Abbreviations]. Tokyo, Jitsuyoeigokaiwagakuinshuppanbu 1946. 18x13cm publisher's printed wrapper; [2],62pp. Very little of the expected browning, an excellent copy. Au$300

A rare colonial dictionary. The preface pretends that this about learning English now that the war is over which may be all-a-hunky but is nonsense. This about learning American, specifically the American spoken by soldiers - the occupation forces. The first entry is A-bomb, followed by ace, Adam and Eve (two eggs - never heard that one), air arm, air-conditioned, Amgot ... past chowmobile, cop, ear wardens, fubar, gob, hep cat, japs, nips and krauts, war brides .. to yank. The abbreviations are real milspeak. Jitsuyoeigokaiwagakuinshuppanbu, which cries out for an abbreviation, translates as Practical English Conversation Academy Publishing Department.
Worldcat finds no copies outside Japan.

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Fire. 火の用心 [Hinoyojin]. A bundle of Japanese fire safety flyers, small posters and brochures from the 1920s and 30s. v.p. v.d. c1920-1941. 62 items plus some duplicates varying between bookmark size and about 38cm high, one 74cm high. A few with damaged edges but still pretty good, some still new. Au$650

An occasional date sighted, ranging from 1920 to 1941. There are three postcard sized colour prints on clear cellophane and, bundle within bundle, there are twelve calligraphic block printed 'beware of fire' sheets.

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Now with extra blood!

Street Kamishibai. Gataro & Yaeko? 死神むすめ : 13巻 [Shinigami Musume : 13 kan]. np. Sadamusha? 195-? Ten handpainted and varnished sheets on heavy boards, 26x36cm. Text handwritten on the back. Edges worn and minor scrapes and blemishes as expected. Stamps of the Osaka and Nagoya kamishibai ethics committees, which my informant speculates were self proclaimed entities that existed nowhere other than as stamps on a handful of stories.
Added is wrecked but complete episode 23, also ten cards. The left hand quarter has been wet and is quite damaged but it is certainly worth saving. Au$1000

This is the complete episode 13 of what might be translated as 'Death's Daughter' which I'm told is a story of horror and revenge but I doubt that anyone living knows the whole story. As far as I can figure, when the kamishibai industry ground to a halt the kamishibai men just packed away, or threw away, whatever episodes they had. If a large hunk of a story or, something I've never seen, a whole story was held by the association you can be sure it was dull, rarely used. Here, I've traced only episodes 10 to 15* which all seem to have come from the same source. How many episodes were there? Who knows.
*Episode 23, now added from the same source and unlikely to be supplemented, doesn't help with the plot but it does ratchet up the tension. Is it all as brutally murderous as this? I suspect so.
It's pretty fabulous, no Golden Yasha but a fair slice of that essential overwrought pervasive dread and stark fear.

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Kawaraban. 流通新貨幣位付早見 [Ryutsu Shin Kahei-i-tsuki Hayami]. n.p.n.d. [c1870]. 32x41cm wood cut. A couple of small blotches, rather good. Au$165

A quick guide to the new coins in circulation. Added to the mass of new things for Japanese to learn and new ways of thinking, with the Meiji restoration, was the new yen based currency.
Kawaraban - illicit illustrated news sheets for the streets - were produced by the million for a couple of hundred years so of course few survive. They were produced for anything more interesting than the drop of a hat.

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Okano Sakae 少年飛行雙六 [Shonen Hiko Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shonen Sekai 1912 (Meiji 45). Colour broadside 55x79cm. Rumpled with several short tears around edges and along folds repaired. Au$250

This delightful illustrated journal of a boy's flying adventures was the new year gift from the boy's magazine Shonen Sekai. It's on a waxy paper that may have seemed a good idea when new but does not handle handling so well. This is the second best copy I've seen so far.
Okano Sakae was one of the generation of artists who came through the western painting department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts at the beginning of the century, later a pupil of Kuroda Seiki, and collaborator with fellow Hakubakai students on the five volume Nihon Meisho Shasei Kiko.

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Sato Unsho. 小学色図問答 [Shogaku Irozu Mondo]. Nagoya, Keiundo 1878 (Meiji 11). 18x13cm publisher's wrapper (blotched); with block or stencil coloured colour wheel and colour chart. A pretty good copy, remarkably good for an old school book. Au$350

Second printing maybe, a month after the first? This is very similar but not quite the same as the Irozu Mondo prefixed as Gakko Hitsoyu (school essentials) rather than Shogaku (primary school) and if that's not confusing enough, this title apparently exists as three different books by different authors.
Western colour theory for Japanese students. The colour chart and wheel are the same as the aforementioned Gakko Hitsoya ... which I guess means that the theory traces back to Field's chromatics.

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HEALEY, Daniel. The Seven Christians Of Championdom - A Tale of the Times. Written, and published for and by The Author, Sydney ... 1885. 26x21cm original half cloth & marbled boards with gilt on black title label (wear to tips and edges, label quite rubbed); 152pp. Printed from handwriting by some kind of duplication or autolithography. Bookplate recording its gift from John Lane Mullins to St Sophia's Library. Au$1200

Singular, eccentric ... all the usual labels apply to this distopian, or at least satirical, romance of the city of Yendis, capital of Champiana. Daniel Healey might be better known as author Whaks Li Kell but it's unlikely. That's the painful pseudonym he used for his other known book, 'The Cornstalk, his habits and habitats' (1893), in which his target expanded from Sydney to the colony of New South Wales.
This did receive a cruel notice in The Bulletin (August 1 1885) but it was written with a hand as heavy on the wit lever as Healey's by someone who would rather be cute than intelligible. It's hard to figure out exactly what the reviewer is mocking. Elsewhere I find a Daniel Healey was an unsuccessful independent candidate for the inner city seat of Sydney-Cook in 1898 and an unsuccessful Labor (possibly) candidate for Sydney-Bligh in 1901 - which sounds like our author - but there were a lot of Daniel Healeys.
How many copies of this were produced is unknown but I'd suggest the four copies found by Trove plus this one must be a noticeable percentage. The only copy I've found sold in recent decades was this same copy.

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Cookery. The Australian Housewives' Manual: a book for beginners and people with small incomes. By an Old Housekeeper. [bound with] Australian Plain Cookery. By a Practical Cook. Fourth edition. [bound with] Men, and How to Manage Them. A book for Australian wives and mothers. By an Old Housekeeper. Melbourne, Massina 1883; n.d.; 1885. Three volumes octavo, together in contemporary half roan (worn but solid). Spots and signs of use but pretty good. Bound without wrappers and additional adverts. Au$2200

Three rare cookery/household books for the price of ... well, three. Ferguson's generation didn't pay much attention to cookbooks but he was pretty diligent: he found one copy of the Housewives' Manual (and two of the second edition including his own); two copies of the seventh edition only of Plain Cookery; and one copy of Men. Today Trove finds one copy of the Housewives' Manual (and five of the second edition); five locations altogether for the second, third, sixth and seventh editions of Plain Cookery; and three locations for Men. So despite the keen hunt for these things in the last few decades they've hardly come pouring out of old pantries and larders.

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TOWNLEY, Houghton. Bedazzled. A novel. Seventh thousand. London, Trischler 1891. Octavo publisher's colour printed wrapper (small chip from the top edge). A rather good copy. Au$375

Seventh thousand but likely the first edition as Trischler - which started life as the Hansom Cab Publishing Company - were given to throwing numbers around. The BL, which is the only library I can find that definitely has a copy, has digitised theirs and it is also the seventh thousand. Unless someone has seen a copy with no such claim on the title I'm going to claim this as the original printing.
I think this is Townley's first novel, and he was fairly young, which might explain the overwrought sensational tale of a doctor willing to murder for science; the secret society; the ill fated beautiful and mysterious French actress ... The critics were not kind: "a most extraordinary sketch, which it were unkind to examine too closely." (The Academy). "A shilling sensational story with somewhat more substance in it than is usually the case" (The Bookseller). "There is something of originality in the story; but it is not particularly pleasant reading." (The Literary World). Just the sort of reviews to make a book irresistible.

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VILLER, Frederick. [Christian Sparre?]. The Black Tortoise : being the strange story of old Frick's Diamond. London, Heinemann 1901. Octavo publisher's illustrated tan cloth blocked in black, white and green. Rear endpaper removed but a nice fresh copy. Au$275

First English edition of an early piece of Nordic noir - only the rude would call it Norwegian wood. I think this is the second book of Inspector Monk, published in Norwegian in 1898, and the only one translated into English then and maybe still.
I was going to ask how it is that rich tiresome old farts like Frick always have a lovely daughter but I remember that I have a lovely daughter without being rich. Anyway, she's his niece. Still it's a troublesome family for Monk to marry into. He's going to spend the rest of his life recovering that damn Black Tortoise. Only a few chapters in it's already been stolen three times.
Then there's the indefinably sinister young Australian: the son of Frick's old friend and rescuer from the Victorian gold fields. Frick's house is named Ballarat in honour of his halcyon days when he spent three years as "sherriff" of Ballarat and made the first part of his fortune. There's no murder but two suicides help balance the score.
The binding is so much like William Nicholson, who designed Heinemann's logo and was published by Heinemann, that I'm near convinced.

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Kimono design. 美ゆき [Miyuki]. Koizumi Gofkuten [190-?]. 37x25cm colour printed boards, ribbon tied (rubbing, edges with some wear); [2]pp & 30 colour lithographs. Some tissues creased and rumpled, signs of use but a perfectly acceptable copy. Au$450

A large and fairly deluxe chromolithographed pattern book of kimono designs. The current Kyoto Koizumi Co deals in kimono and fashion and trace their history back to the early 18th century. Presuming this is the same company they have come down in the world since the days of pattern books like this.

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Jonathan Swift & Katayama Heisaburo. 鵞瓈皤児回島記 [Garibarusu Shimameguri]. Tokyo, Inada Sahei 1887 (Meiji 20). 19x13cm publisher's cloth backed illustrated boards; seven lithograph plates. A dash of each of the many flaws these flimsy books are liable to: some insect nibbling of the spine and back cover, browning of the paper, a few leaves a bit proud of the front edge (not a sprung signature since these books don't have signatures). The inner front hinge was taped at some time but it's not clear why: it hasn't separated. Not a great copy but by no means a bad copy, not even an average copy of one of these board books. Au$750

Second edition of the first translation of Gulliver's Travels, or the important bit of it. These adventures in Lilliput appeared in a Japanese version in 1880 with the vague promise of the next part. The second, the Brobdingnagian, came from a different translater in 1887, some six or seven months after this second edition of the first book. I don't think anything like a complete Gulliver appeared for a fair while after that, so the Japanese audience had to wait decades to read about Gulliver's trip to Japan. The illustrations here are copied from Thomas Morten's which first appeared in a Cassell edition in 1866.
Yoko Inagi's 2014 well meaning if over egged thesis (The Evolution of Japanese Utopianism and How Akutagawa’s Dystopian Novella, Kappa ...) makes the point that Gulliver's Travels along with More's Utopia began life in Japan as political novels rather than fantastic adventures or satires. Gulliver followed much the same arc in Japan as it had in the west and by the 1920s was a children's book.
This is a 'ball cover' (boru hyoshi, apparently a corruption of 'board') book - a signal of modernity and the Japanese equivalent of a yellowback: flimsy western style bindings with lithograph covers that rarely survive in such good shape.
I traced no copies of either edition of this outside Japan.

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Izumi Kojiro. 和洋家具雛形 [Wayo Kagu Hinagata]. Tokyo, Seikado 1909 (Meiji 42). Two volumes 12x18cm, publisher's wrappers with title labels (marked & rubbed but solid); semi measured drawings throughout. Marks, splodges and signs of use but very decent. sold

First published in 1901. A nifty pattern book of Japanese and western furniture designs, clear enough that a decent carpenter/joiner could build straight from the book. There are several designs for display and shopfittings among the bureaus, tripod tables, screens and tansu.

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Akita Yazaemon. 新撰大工雛形 - 西洋技術 [Shinsen Daiku Hinagata - Seiyo Gijutsu] Tokyo, Togaido 1889 (Meiji 22). 26x18cm publisher's wrapper with title label; lithograph(?) illustrations throughout, a couple with rubrics. A bit used but pretty good. Au$250

An unusual carpenter/builder's pattern book - for both the size and clarity of the drawings - of western gates, fences, masonry arches, roof trussing, gable and finial, and staircases.

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Tom Collins [Joseph Furphy]. Such is Life being certain extracts from the diary of Tom Collins. Sydney, The Bulletin 1903. Octavo publisher's olive-ish cloth blocked in dark green and red (spine a little browned, a dash of flecking to the sides). Clipped review of Furphy's poems pasted to the the preliminary advertisement leaf. A pretty good copy. Au$950

First edition - and hard to find in decent shape - of one of Australia's two great novels of the colonial period and undoubtedly the best Irish novel to come out of Australia. Clarke's His Natural Life is a Victorian English novel while Such is Life is Irish and modern - in the way that Tristram Shandy is: discursive, discontinuous and playful with both language and the reader.

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CLARKE, Marcus. The Mystery of Major Molineux, and Human Repetends. Melbourne, Cameron Laing 1881. Octavo modern cloth; title page dusty with a small piece from the bottom corner: without its front wrapper for a while it seems, but rather good once you're past that. Without the slip announcing that half the profits would go to Clarke's widow and children. Au$875

First edition and hard to find. Clarke’s last work and just posthumous; R.P. Whitworth’s preface is an obituary. Major Molineux is a Tasmanian psychological suspense thriller which for "intensity of sustained interest and soul—thrilling excitement it is only surpassed by Edgar Allen Poe ..." (preface). Possibly quite true though the conclusion is unsatisfyingly modern in its inconclusiveness. The Human Repetends, an earlier story and set in Melbourne, has similar "weird, physiological, and psychological" interest.

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CLARKE, Marcus, et al. The Australian Christmas Box: a series of stories ... Melbourne, Cameron Laing [1879?]. Octavo publisher's printed wrapper (signs of use, a touch ragged); two full page illustrations. Small hole in a margin touching a few letters that looks like a production flaw. Pretty good. Au$750

Clarke, Robert Whitworth and Waif Wander (Mary Fortune) have done the right thing and provided tales filled with madness and murder. The others ... meh. Grosvenor Bunster's effort is a revolting, heartwarming tale of redemption a la Christmas Carol.

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