Fiction

The Canary Jacket – Ann Shead – First Edition 1968

First edition published by Collins, London and Sydney in 1968. A “novel of early Australia” by the distinguished author.

Octavo, 256 pages, a very good copy in a complete and clean dust jacket.

Australian author Ann Shead came from Cornish stock. This story start in Cornwall and smuggling which leads to transportation to New South Wales. The realities of life downunder for convicts bound out to serve a Master are to the fore of the narrative. Things do improve and the book ends pleasantly high and rewarding.

Convicts doing it tough but seeing it through in the end … the lucky ones in the Lucky Country.

$30.00

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Silver Mist – Joan Sutherland – First Edition 1935

1935 first edition with a lovely art deco inspired dust jacket. Published by Cassell, London etc, octavo, 287 pages. A ripple to the front board and the odd spot on page edges, really a very good copy in a super dust jacket.

A romance but with some heat. Penelope falls for Sir Garth. The good looking Garth (they both are) is cited in a divorce 1930’s style. The case failed but Sir Garth was left with the stigma (nothing’s changed there). Lady Olivia is a pursuer but maybe Penelope has some tricks in store.

1935 First Edition by the much admired Sutherland.

$60.00

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The Girl Green as Elderflower – Randolph Stow – First Edition 1980

Another absolutely crisp, as if new first edition published by Secker & Warburg, London in 1980.

Octavo, 150 pages, dust jacket art by John Piper.

Randolph Stow had been awarded the Patrick White Award the previous year. White established the award from funds received form his Nobel Prize … good on him.

Following quickly after Visitants a quite different book by Stow. Previous work often dealing with the deterioration of an individual here we have the opposite. Crispin Claire has been badly afflicted by his time in the Tropics. Convalescing in Suffolk the environment provides nourishment. With improved strength he begins to write a narrative around three 12th Century local stories, and he finds himself moving between the present and the time of Richard the Lionheart. Beautifully and skillfully written.

Unusual and gripping story as can expected from Stow.

$50.00

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Letters writ by a Turkish Spy, Who Liv’d Five and Forty Years Undiscovered at Paris; Giving an Impartial Account to the Divan of Constantinople of the Most Remarkable Transactions in Europe – Complete in Eight Volumes. Giovanni Paolo Marana – 1748

A very nice set of this almost legendary work, complete and unusually in their original bindings. Fictional letters claiming to have been written by an Ottoman spy named “Mahmut the Arabian” embedded in the French Court of Louis XIV.

Published in London by Wilde, Ballard and others in 1748. Eight volumes (Over 600 letters in all), duodecimo, engraved frontispiece to Vol I, full contemporary calf, spines gilt, some joints a bit cracked but holding. A twelfth edition of a great publishing success of the 18thC which would go on for a further fifty years.

Contemporary bookplate of Robert Midgley dated 1748 so the first owner. And the modern book label of Edward John Kenny the Latinist of Peterhouse College, Cambridge University, visiting at Harvard etc.

A journal of gossip and anecdotes on politics and events and shenanigans going on in France at the time.

Written in Italian by Giovanni Paola Marana (1642-1693) a Genoese refugee in the Court of the said Louis XIV. He completed the first volume of 102 letters, and had it translated to French and published in Paris in 1684-1686. Other volumes were published as they were completed over time. English translations by William Bradshaw became available in 1687. Later volumes issued first in English in London leading some to believe they were not by Marana. However, the consistency in style and use of words really points to Marana as being the author of the full set, not doubt with the help of translators and editors of the day.

Well liked by Daniel Defoe who wrote an aptly named “Continuation of Turkish Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy in Paris” … a sort of 18thC sequel.

Incidentally, the last owner Professor Kenny used to gauge his candidates by seeing how nice they were to his cat Fufu … it became known as the Fufu test … that’s Latin for you.

The Turkish Spy – A Classic By Marana

$790.00

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An Egyptian Journal – William Golding

A first US edition by Nobel Prize winning William Golding, published by Faber and Faber in 1985.

Golding’s first novel “Lord of the Flies” a Voyager favourite … strange because originally rejected by Faber and, despite his first, surely significantly .behind his Nobel award … which arrived in 1983 just before the publication of this adventure in Egypt. Aussies will know his Rites of Passage and the other parts of what was a superb trilogy … made into a classic screenplay with Benedict Cumberbatch as the protagonist.

An unusual and interesting book, a no nonsense account … Golding only needed to please one person … himself. So we quite like his honest views of everything Egyptian on the tour … not done in grand style but in the fashion of any honest adventurer.

Larger octavo, 207 pages, illustrated with interesting titling .. a very good copy.

A very different Egypt travel account by the talented irascible sarcastic observant Golding

$20.00

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Ungava: A Tale of Esquimax-Land – Robert M. Ballantyne

One of the most prolific writers of adventure for the young Scottish born Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825-1894) went to Canada at the age of 16. There he worked for six years for the Hudson Bay Company. In his autobiography he said that writing long letters to his mother on the goings on of the fur traders was the stimulus behind his first books.

His first was “The Hudson Bay Company” and then “The Young Fur Traders” … this book was his fourth. He went on to pen over 100 books to the delight of his adventure seeking followers.

An early 20th century edition published by Nelson, London. Octavo, 509 pages, blue cloth covered boards with sailing ship design and design to spine, coloured frontispiece. A very good copy indeed.

A party of explorers head into Eskimo territory to establish a fur trading post at Ungava Bay. Situated in the Nunavik region of Quebec.

Ballantyne in one of those “live there did that” adventures.

$60.00

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The Canary Jacket – Ann Shead – First Edition 1968

Silver Mist – Joan Sutherland – First Edition 1935

The Girl Green as Elderflower – Randolph Stow – First Edition 1980

Letters writ by a Turkish Spy, Who Liv’d Five and Forty Years Undiscovered at Paris; Giving an Impartial Account to the Divan of Constantinople of the Most Remarkable Transactions in Europe – Complete in Eight Volumes. Giovanni Paolo Marana – 1748

An Egyptian Journal – William Golding

Ungava: A Tale of Esquimax-Land – Robert M. Ballantyne

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