Search Results: Authors starting with J from Hordern House Rare Books

Hobart Town: 24 December, 1824. ALS single sheet, folded to letter size with early "Hobart Town, VDL" oval handstamp. Short letter penned on Christmas Eve from a Hobart Town merchant enclosing an account (not present) to Henry Jellicoe of Campbell Town in Van Diemen's Land. Jellicoe served as a Justice of the Peace in the Campbell Town district from 1824-1836. He was a prominent (and grandiose) landowner and in the 1830s his property improvements included the addition of a 30 foot ballroom. He left the Colony in 1837 for England, and the wishes for his good health penned in this letter, were to no avail: Jellicoe died of smallpox in 1839. An ephemeral example of early Tasmanian postal history. .

Venice, 1430. In fine fresh condition.. Illuminated leaf on vellum, 469 x 353 mm., with illuminated initial "I", 122 x 90 mm. (body of initial); initial on a burnished gold ground and painted in rich colours of blue, red, green and ochre, the initial extended with lush leafy decoration in similar colours with a bird-head terminal to form a full marginal border, several small gold balls around the decoration; square musical notation on red 4-line staves, 7 lines of interlinear text in a large rounded gothic script. Framed. A leaf of exceptional quality from an early fifteenth century Venetian Antiphonal. The extravagantly illuminated initial "I", which includes a wolf's head in the decoration, introduces the text "Ierusalem cito veni", a Responsory at Matins for the Second Sunday in Advent. The very rich colours of the foliate decoration are characteristic of the work of Christopher Cortese (fl.1409-39), the leading Venetian illuminator of his day. .

London: Richard Bentley, 1862. Two volumes, octavo; in a fine contemporary binding of salmon-pink calf, spines ornately gilt in compartments between rasied bands, double labels, marbled endpapers and edges, by Zaehnsdorf with his stamp. Jessop gives an account of an adventurous tourist's travels in Australia in the late 1850s and early 1860s ('A detailed description of the South Eastern part of Australia, including station properties, social conditions, travel, aborigines, etc.' according to Ferguson). Importantly Jessup records (vol. 2, pp. 233-50) meeting two men at Wilpena 'on their way back to Adelaide, with the results of a private exploration.... The leader, or scout, was named Giles, who was engaged by Mole, a man of more energy than money, to assist him in opening up some new part ... [They] finally left the known country at Angipena, and entered upon the unknown in the direction of north-west ... They were absent about a month from Angipena, and altogether, going and coming, passed over… Read More

London: W. Strahan & T. Cadell, 1776. Very good.. Octavo; early repair to front hinge and spine, in contemporary sheep. First collected edition of these political pamphlets, published anonymously. Probably the most famous of the four is the last, 'Taxation no Tyranny; An Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress', a scathing attack on those 'zealots of anarchy' who have 'denied to the Parliament of Britain the right of taxing the American Colonies'. Bitterly opposed to the War of Independence, Johnson inveighs with a sustained denunciation which includes his famous quip 'If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?'. .

Paternoster Row, London: Goff & Co, 1787. In very good condition; trimmed to engraving line with eighteenth century manuscript initials within oval boarder.. Engraving, 17 x 11 cms. title inscribed around oval half length portrait; vignette below depicting a redemption scene by a harbour with sailing ships, captioned with a biblical inscription. A rare portrait engraving of Rev. Johnson chaplain to the new colony; an appointment which had occurred in 1786 largely through the influence of William Wilberforce and John Newton. Johnson held the first Christian service in Australia on February 3rd. 1788. Johnson was Australia's first clergyman, (until Marsden's arrival in 1794), as well as a pioneer farmer on his 350 acres in present-day Canterbury; his two successful wheat crops by mid-1790 mean that he preceded Ruse, traditionally regarded as Australia's first private wheat grower, by some time. Tench in fact described him as "the best farmer in the colony", and his general interest in natural history… Read More

London: T. Osborne, 1746. Eight volumes, quarto, contemporary speckled calf with red and black spine labels, gilt decorated. A handsome set in eighteenth-century calf bindings of this classic literary collection, edited by Samuel Johnson as a young man, a decade before he would establish his reputation with the Dictionary of 1755. Johnson was originally employed by the publisher to help catalogue the second Earl of Oxford, Edward Harley's impressive library, which later became a foundation collection of the British Museum library. Publisher and editor both saw the need to publish Harley's extensive collection in a more lasting and accessible form, and later generations have been thankful for their recognition of the ephemeral nature of much of the collection: "it has been for a long time a very just complaint, among the learned, that a multitude of valuable productions, published in small pamphlets, or in single sheets, are in a short time, too often by accidents, or negligence, destroyed, and… Read More

London: J. Roberts, 1744. Professional paper repairs to gutter for first 15 pages, joints starting, head of spine chipped and some rubbing to extremities, but a good copy.. Octavo in fours, without half title and final advertisement; in nineteenth-century half calf with marbled paper sides. First edition, last page in state with single-line erratum. Like Rothschild's copy the pages 185 and 186 are misnumbered 179 and 180. Savage, 'an impostor, a libeller and something of a ruffian' (CHEL) had died in Bristol prison in August 1743 and the same month Johnson announced that he was preparing his friend's biography. Savage and Johnson had endured the poverty of their youth together, and this was Johnson's even-handed tribute, 'a work of remarkable and varied interest' (CHEL). He later included it, with only minor changes, in The Lives of the Poets. .

Oxford and Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1987. Four volumes, folio, heavily illustrated throughout; a fine set in the original cloth, dustwrappers. Complete set, in first editions, of the splendid and authoritative analysis of the graphic record of Cook's three voyages, by the two great experts in the field, Rüdiger Joppien and Bernard Smith. The work quickly sold out and it was re-published in 1988. On each of his three voyages of exploration Cook employed professional artists to record his discoveries. The exotic plants, animals, peoples and places which they sketched provided an important and thrilling record, and many of their images would later become the basis of the famous engraved plates which adorn the official voyage accounts. This authoritative account encompasses the work of both the professional and amateur artists on Cook's voyages. Each of the voyages gets a separate volume - the particularly important third voyage… Read More

London: T. & W. Boone, 1847. Two volumes, octavo, with many engravings (full-page and textual), and a folding map at the end of each volume; a fine copy, complete with all advertisement leaves including a half-sheet advertisement for Leichhardt in vol. I and another for Dutton's "South Australia" in vol. II, in the original and unfaded blue-grey blind-stamped cloth. First edition: a fine copy, in original condition, of this important surveying voyage of coastal Australia. Jukes' account is particularly important for his description of the Queensland coast, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Torres Strait, and includes an impressively detailed map of the north-east coast from Endeavour River north to New Guinea. The Fly, Captain Blackwood, sailed from Falmouth on 11 April 1842 with the cutter Bramble. Jukes sailed as naturalist to the expedition, and with his captain's consent wrote the official narrative. The survey of Torres Strait and of the Great Barrier Reef, as well as the various New Guinea… Read More