Products | Voyager Rare Books Maps & Prints

Roald Amundsen’s Journey in Flight – From Pole to Pole – Garth Cameron.

Hard to find in Australia possibly because of the unusual publisher Skyhorse Publishing albeit first American 2014 having been published by the equally difficult to find Pen and Sword, England version of the previous year.

Octavo, 199 pages, illustrated throughout, maps and from original photographs. Useful although sometimes patronising glossary of terms [we do know what an aircraft is]. Very good if not fine copy.

Amundsen’s aviation involvement and it was extensive and, given the period, rather experimental. He was lost through it in the end … his list of life achievements is undoubtedly heroic – we find this side of him all that more interesting.

The writer a New Zealander with a love of flying – powered and gliding produces a well researched book – the presentation has a hint of a self-published style likely because of then Skyhorse – but we like it.

Amundsen in the air – the cold air that is – a significant story and one that was his end.

$35.00

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Biggles Air Detective – Captain Johns

Stolen Aircraft, “Black Sheep”, the case of the Wounded Agent … a Biggles shorter story delight, seven in all.

Published by Dean & Son a 1960’s reissue of an early Biggles collection. Octavo, 151 pages, toned evenly, a little chipped to jacket to jacket still a good copy.

Biggles packed with thrills

$25.00

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Biggles Pioneer Air Fighter – Captain Johns

An early 1960’s edition published by Dean & Son, London. Octavo, 184 pages a pretty good clean copy

Super Biggles collection of short stories with glossary of chap’s terms for those that haven’t been in the RAF

Biggles explained and entertaining

$30.00

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[Music Theme] Violin with Score Bookends – By Marion Bronze c1940’s

Delightful pair of weighty bookends. Stand xx cm high and weigh x.x kg the pair. A few bumps but overall, pretty good. A great present for the musically gifted. Made by Marion and Arthur France in their cottage factory in New Jersey.

Marion Bronze – Bookends

Marion Bronze was a Mom and Pop business. Marion and Arthur France started making bookends and other decorative items in 1922 in the sheds behind their house at Metuchen, New Jersey. They continued to do this until the mid-1950’s when the business was put up for sale.

The image of the house comes from the actual business sale document which Voyager found through a website run by Marion and Arthur’s grandchildren who could remember waiting on the porch of this fine cottage – waiting for Grandpa to finish his daily toil in the shed at the back of the yard.

The Encyclopaedia of Bookends by Kuritzky states that the history of Marion Bronze is very sketchy, and they do not even have the information above.

What they do have is numerous examples of Marion Bronze items as they were bought as a collection from a New York City landlord who had found them in an abandoned apartment. The tenant had been an employee of Marion Bronze and had brought home over fifty examples of their work.

$380.00

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Rare Image of Australia’s Rarest Bird – Rawnsley’s Satin Bower Bird [Ptilonorhynchus Rawnsleyi] – Silvester Diggles – c1870

Rare original hand-coloured image lithographed on stone by Queensland naturalist Silvester Diggles. Highlighted with gum Arabic. Published as part of his magnificent work “The Ornithology of Australia” between 1866 and 1870 in twenty-one parts by Pugh of Brisbane, in a very limited edition. By the time part sixteen was published there were only ninety-two subscribers. The original plates were executed by Diggles and his niece, Rowena Birkett.

The bird specimen from which this lithograph was derived was found by H.C. Rawnsley in the scrub behind his house in Witton [Indooroopilly] on the Brisbane River in Julu 1867. Diggles dedicated and named the bird after him. The narrative that accompanies the plate goes on and is of historical interest. Diggles states that the strong resemblance in the bird’s colouring to the Satin Bower bird and the Regent Bower bird may lead to the suspicion of it being a hybrid. However, he refers to the explorer A.C. Gregory, who inspected the bird and confirmed that he had seen the very same species in Northern Queensland … the narrative goes into detail regarding Gregory’s testimony. However, we now know that the bird was a hybrid after all – the only other examples of a similar occurrence are quite recent … in the last twenty year. We believe though only three such occurrences have been identified to date.

The work measures 38cm by 27cm, good strong hand colouring clean and undamaged. A very scarce item.

About Silvester Diggles

Silvester Diggles (1817-1880) artist and musician born in Liverpool, England. He came to Australia in 1853 settling in Brisbane where he taught music and drawing. Diggles was a founder of the Brisbane Choral Society in 1859 and the Philharmonic Society in 1861 known as “the father of music in Brisbane”. Diggles was also a founder of the Queensland Philosophical Society and helped establish the Museum. His greatest work was The Ornithology of Australia. It nearly sent him broke. His health deteriorated worry about finances being a factor. He died at Kangaroo Point in 1880.

Price $590.00 unframed
An opportunity to own a Silvester Diggles lithograph of an exceedingly rare bird indeed.

$590.00

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The Belgium Essays – Charlotte and Emily Bronte – Edited and translated by Sue Lonoff.

A first edition of this rather scarce and unknown book published as “A Critical Edition” by the Yale University Press in 1996 [they have done some great stuff].

Large octavo, 468 pages, very good condition in a full clean dust jacket.

In 1842 Charlotte and Emily B went to Brussels to study and write under the tutelage of Constantin Heger. They returned for the same again the next year. The result of this was twenty-eight essays penned in French. This book is the first to contain them all, nine of them have never been published elsewhere. They are presented in their original form with manuscript corrections and notes and with a facing English translation by Lonoff.

Special Bronte work from Charlotte and Emily expanding our knowledge of their prestigious talent.

$50.00

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All products

Roald Amundsen’s Journey in Flight – From Pole to Pole – Garth Cameron.

Biggles Air Detective – Captain Johns

Biggles Pioneer Air Fighter – Captain Johns

[Music Theme] Violin with Score Bookends – By Marion Bronze c1940’s

Rare Image of Australia’s Rarest Bird – Rawnsley’s Satin Bower Bird [Ptilonorhynchus Rawnsleyi] – Silvester Diggles – c1870

The Belgium Essays – Charlotte and Emily Bronte – Edited and translated by Sue Lonoff.

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