Search Results: Christmas from Rare Illustrated Books

Ninetenth century scrapbook. Victorian. Christmas greeting cards and scraps arranged on each page with an outsider art feel. Some of the scraps have been arranged into different letters of the alphabet. Bound in hand-coloured illustrated leather boards, a border made from peacock feathers, title embossed on the front cover, a near fine copy.

Sydney and London: Angus & Robertson, 1939. Signed First Edition. WALL, Dorothy. A collection of poetry about Australian birds and animals. Nelle Grant Cooper has composed a cheery Christmas ditty on the front endpaper and dedicated this copy to fellow Australian poet, Jack Moses, signed and dated December 1939. Quarto, pictorial papered boards, dust jacket torn along spine with moderate foxing throughout.

Adelaide Mail, 1938. Gibbs, May and Glover, Tom. Single sheet, one face printed in colour featuring Gumnut Babies 'Bib and Bub' by May Gibbs delivering Christmas presents with their friends and 'Skeeter and His Magic Ring' by Tom Glover. The reverse face of the sheet is the Christmas children's letters section. Single broadside sheet measuring 410 x 590 mm, some large chips have resulted in minor loss of images, else in good order for a publication of this age and nature.

London: W.J.P. Monckton, 1901. First Edition. Delightful journal for children with short stories, comic strips and illustrations. Titled 'Father Christmas's Book Tea', Arthur Rackham's double-page illustration presents as many characters from children's literature as you can imagine. There is Little Red RIding Hood, the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, Straw Peter, Mother Goose, The Three Bears, Uncle Tom, Gulliver, Mogli from the Jungle Book, Hansel and Gretel, Little Bo Peep, four and twenty black birds flying from a pie... everyone you can imagine has come to meet Father Christmas. Also includes 'The Road to Rome, or the Silly Stowaway' by Edith Nesbit, 'The Christmas of the Poor Players' illustrated by Arthur Rackham, and 'The Hare that Doubled', again drawn by Rackham. Folio, bound in illustrated wrappers, 40 pages +advertisements, spotting throughout.

Melbourne & Sydney: Tatchell, Garritty & Dobson, 1892. First Edition. Walter Withers, Ernest Ferris, Fred Kneebone, and John Clemens. A celebration of the Australian Christmas with illustrations by one of the founding members of the Heidelberg School, Walter Withers. Issued as a souvenir by the Post and Telegraph Departments, this charming work includes many portraits of the government officers, together with depictions of their offices ranging from the Sydney General Post Office to the Alice Springs Telegraph Station. It is further illustrated by many 'picture postcard' views of Australian and New Zealand cities and landscapes. This is the only recorded publication by the artists, Fred Kneebone and Ernest Ferris, but all three artists have almost equal shares in the production. Walter Withers first arrived in Melbourne in 1883 but did not settle there until 1888, opening his Melbourne studio in 1891. Produced when Australia began to suffer deeply from the depression of the 1890s, the artists would… Read More

United States of America: International Cocktail, Wine and Spirits Digest, Inc, 1948. As 'Maitre de Bar' at New York's Hotel Pierre in the 1940s, Oscar Haimo poured drinks for the best known celebrities of his time. Oscar Haimo self-published his 'Cocktail and Wine Digest'- in the drinks trade, it was known as the 'barman's bible'. Haimo wrote from his private notes and included his own poems & drawings, and interesting blue-tinted photographic plates of people and places in NYC. About himself, Haimo said "the greatest thing in this mixologist's life is the 'cocktail par excellence'"-- perhaps referring to his prize-winning 'MacArthur' cocktail (lime juice, Triple Sec, Rum & Jamaican Rum, a dash of egg white, shaken well). Gossip-columnist Walter Winchell described this drink "as zingy as its name". Haimo indexed his cocktails A-Z. His categories include Fizzes/ Flips/ Punches/ Rickeys/ Shrubs/ Slings/ Smashes/ Sours/ Swizzles/ Toddies.  "Cocktails and Wine Digest' is an engaging and handsome… Read More

London: Ward, Lock and Company, 1915. New enlarged and revised edition edition with numerous colour plates and just over two thousand pages. More than just a cookery book, Mrs. Beeton's guide is an encyclopedia of useful information on all aspects of domestic life. Chapters of interest include table decoration, treatment and payment of servants, medicine for children and the disabled, basic legal problems and their resolution, homeopathy, design and organisation of the nursery and much more. Interestingly the cookery section of this enormous book incorporates some foreign dishes relatively new to British cuisine including Indian, Jewish and Italian food. The former colonies are represented with separate chapters on Australian and South African dishes. This book is sure to equally please those with an interest in cookery and British social history respectively. Unusually thick large octavo; viii, 1998 (last blank) pages + advertisements, colour frontispiece and 31 full-page colour plates, hundreds of… Read More

Melbourne: George Robertson, 1909. First Edition. First edition of this scarce children's book, illustrated by Percy Lindsay in what was to become his characteristic "Bulletin" style, with full-page plates and marginal sketches on every page. [Muir, 2316.]. Small quarto, illustrations throughout, text set within Australian bushland theme ornamental borders; in the original pictorial grey cloth with vivid red lettering and illustration, a very good copy, better than usual.