Australian Rare

Little Ragged Blossom and more about Snugglepot and Cuddlepie – May Gibbs – First Edition c 1920

Published Sydney: Angus Robertson no date but 1920 and a First Edition.

Quarto. Cloth backed pictorial boards with a colour vignette of Little Ragged Blossom pasted on with some wear. The odd mark – on the whole a very good copy.

The wonderful fantasy world of the gum-nut babies portrayed in glorious detail. Illustrated by Gibbs with two full colour plates and twenty wonderful sepia plates as well as pictorial end papers and many line illustrations in-text. Scarce in any condition. Reference the authority Muir 2752.

Little Ragged Blossom a May Gibbs Delight

$240.00

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The Mutineer – A Romance of Pitcairn Island – Louis Becke and Walter Jeffrey – First Colonial (Australian) Edition 1898.

Likely technically the first edition is the London issue of that year. The first and this issue the first Colonial issue by Angus & Robertson both extremely scarce.

Octavo, 298 pages plus Publishers catalogue. Original dark green cloth covered binding, gilt title to spine. The odd mark to the boards, missing front free end paper and occasional light ageing. Otherwise really not bad and, try to find another one.

George Lewis Becke (1855-1913) was born at Port Macquarie and must be regarded as the best Australian author of the period in the genre adventure … South Seas … historical based fiction. He has been compared with Robert Louis Stevenson, Melville, Kipling, Conrad etc exalted company indeed.

Becke had the pedigree – from an early age he escaped to the South Pacific … ferried vessels to Bully Hayes, was tried (and acquitted) as a pirate at Brisbane at the age of 19 etc etc.

Prolific writer once he settled down. This Bounty Mutiny based story one of the later works and a collaboration. Didn’t get into print in the USA as a relationship between different races didn’t fit the then standards.

With a novel we at Voyager always like a good short helpful first sentence. We have the first paragraph here just to get you into the mood.

“It was night at Tahiti, in the Society Islands. The trade-wind had died away, and a bright flood of shimmering moonlight poured down upon the slumbering waters of a little harbour a few miles distant from Matavia Bay, and the white curve of beach that fringed the darkened line of palms shone and glistened like a belt of ivory under the effulgence of its rays. For nearly half a mile the broad sweep of dazzling sand showed no interruption nor break upon its surface save at one spot; there it ran out into a long narrow point, on which, under a small cluster of graceful cocos, growing almost at the water’s edge, a canoe was drawn up”.

Louis Becke’s scarce and somewhat controversial South Seas story.

$120.00

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Bony & The white Savage – Arthur Upfield – First edition 1961

A hard to find first edition published by Heinemann, London in 1961.

Octavo, 230 pages, reproduction dust jacket. Ownership details on title; free end paper with a piece cut out. Otherwise a very clean and bright copy of an often badly foxed edition.

An old timer in the deep south-west of Western Australia spots a violent criminal on his way back to the caves of Rhudder’s Inlet. Inspecter Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte is called in with his tracker Lew. What they find leaves them shaken to the core.

Bony discovers strange goings on in the very south-west.

$60.00

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Larger than Life – Twenty Stories by Xavier Herbert – First Edition 1963

Twenty entertainments by the distinguished author of the monumental Capricornia.

Published by Angus and Robertson. Octavo, 248 pages of solid yarns all connected to the Far North of Australia (Xavier Herbert country) ranging from Cooktown in Far North Queensland right across to Darwin in the Northern Territory. A super copy in a clean complete dust jacket of period style.

A lengthy Preface written by the author from his home on the beautiful Mossman Beach in the Far North helps the reader nicely into the collection.

Our favourites Marrying Money; Kaijek the Songman; An Eagle called Ned Kelly; Rise and Fall of Jeremiah Stacey and the last little ditty appropriately named “Last Toss”.

Superior short stories from Northmost Australia.

$35.00

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Womba – and Aboriginal Stockboy (in the Cattle Country in the Heart of Australia) – F.J. McLeod – First edition 1952.

Published by Georgian House, Melbourne, a first edition generally in very good clean condition with the super period wrap around dust jacket art.

The writer of the story of Womba had been a mounted policeman. The story centres on Dericka Station which is in the MacDonnell Ranges.

Super depiction of station life where Womba learns to break in wild colts and the mustering of cattle over the vast expanses of the station. Interactions with the local Myall tribesmen are a little mysterious.

An acceptable treatment of the subject matter especially for the period.

Womba in the MacDonnell Ranges.

$25.00

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Pilot Pete [An Antarctic Adventure] – Alan Villiers

Published by Angus and Robertson a 1963 edition of Villiers’s delightful book with a “save the whales message” and he saved some ships as well .

Drawing of maritime adventurer Villiers’s experience whaling in the Antarctic and the knowledge and superstitions that surround encounters with a porpoise. Porpoise Pete lived around Perseverance Harbour, Campbell Island .. which is south-east of the Enderby Islands, in turn south of New Zealand.

Nicely illustrated by H.T. Cauldwell. Octavo, 64 pages. A very good gift worthy copy.

Villiers could write for all ages about the coldest of seas. .

$25.00

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Little Ragged Blossom and more about Snugglepot and Cuddlepie – May Gibbs – First Edition c 1920

The Mutineer – A Romance of Pitcairn Island – Louis Becke and Walter Jeffrey – First Colonial (Australian) Edition 1898.

Bony & The white Savage – Arthur Upfield – First edition 1961

Larger than Life – Twenty Stories by Xavier Herbert – First Edition 1963

Womba – and Aboriginal Stockboy (in the Cattle Country in the Heart of Australia) – F.J. McLeod – First edition 1952.

Pilot Pete [An Antarctic Adventure] – Alan Villiers

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