To buy or not to buy? $2m Shakespeare folio headlines literary treasures on sale at Melbourne's rare book fair

The Guardian

31-07-2025

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a bibliophile in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a 1894 deluxe edition of Pride and Prejudice. The first fully illustrated edition, adorned with Hugh Thomson's pen and ink drawings and printed on fine China paper, is expected to sell for A$15,000 (£7,300) at Melbourne's rare book fair this week.
The edition reflects the late 19th-century renaissance of Jane Austen's reputation after her books spent decades out of print. Bound by the famed Riviere bindery, it exemplifies the collision of literary legacy and exquisite craftsmanship, according to its dealer, Pom Harrington.
'Austen had been neglected for nearly 50 years,' he says. 'Then this comes out, illustrated by one of the best of the time, Hugh Thomson [also renowned for his illustrations of Dickens novels]. It was clearly done as a luxury item.'
Fewer than a dozen survive in good condition.
Yet the true star of this year's fair is a rarity of a different order: a Shakespeare third folio, printed in 1664. Once owned by the astronomer and MP Charles Shuckburgh, the volume is bound in 18th-century leather and carries a $2m price tag.
It is among a handful that escaped destruction in the Great Fire of London in 1666, which ravaged the St Paul's district where most of the city's publishing houses were clustered. The folio was the first to include Pericles, Prince of Tyre, and its scarcity is legend.
The Shakespeare folio headlines a compelling constellation of literary relics on offer at the annual rare book fair at the University of Melbourne, and this year dealers from around the world will congregate in Australia for the first time for the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) symposium.
The symposium, held at the Wheeler Centre, will explore contemporary challenges in the global trade of rare books and cultural property. Experts gather to discuss provenance, border restrictions and dramatic cases of literary theft, including the heist near Heathrow airport in 2017 in which £2m worth of rare books were stolen in a Mission: Impossible style operation. They were later recovered buried beneath a farmhouse in Romania.
Beyond Shakespeare and Austen, the fair's exhibits span cultures, genres and centuries. One exceptionally intriguing item is an 1850 handkerchief covered in thousands of miniature Chinese characters. It is an exquisite hand-inked cheat sheet that would have been smuggled into the Imperial Chinese examination, the highly competitive written test young scholars were required to pass to enter the Qing dynasty bureaucracy.
Described by Harrington as 'entirely handwritten with just mind-blowing craftsmanship', it is priced at $17,500.
Another intriguing artefact is a copy of what is believed to be the first English-language sex manual. Dated 1695, Aristotle's Masterpiece (not written by Aristotle) appears to be a curious 17th-century hybrid of The Joy of Sex and What to Expect When You're Expecting. This copy includes copious candid notes written in the margins by the book's husband and wife owners, Winifred and Francis.
The couple appeared to be preoccupied with the words 'copulation' and 'seed' and seemed to be worried sick about giving birth to a baby with a 'monstrous' deformity; Winifred would later die in childbirth. With only one other annotated copy known to exist, it is going in Melbourne for $35,000.
Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning
David Samwell's A Narrative of the Death of Captain Cook, printed in 1786, carries an asking price 10 times as high. The eyewitness account – Samwell served as Cook's surgeon on his third and final voyage of exploration – apportions blame to members of Cook's crew for failing to prevent his death during a confrontation with Hawaiians at Kealakekua Bay in 1779.
Samwell's scathing assessment of the way some of his crew treated their island hosts leading up to Cook's death never made it into the official narrative received in England. Only five copies, including this one, have made it to auction in the past five decades and it is expected to attract significant interest among global collectors of Cook memorabilia as well as museums and libraries, at the princely price tag of $350,000.
The bookbinders Sangorski & Sutcliffe have gone down in history as the company that lost what was believed to be the most lavishly bejewelled book in modern history. More than 1,000 rubies, topazes and emeralds decorating a volume of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám went down with the Titanic in 1912. More than two decades later, the bookbinders recreated the extravagant folly – only to see it incinerated by German bombers during the London blitz.
But for lovers of book bling, a more modestly bedazzled Sangorski manuscript of Rudyard Kipling's If – one of Britain's most beloved poems – will be selling for $150,000.
A classic that only narrowly escaped its own incineration is a signed first edition of DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover in its original plain cream dust jacket, self-published by the author. It is number 336 of just 1,000 Lawrences printed in Florence and distributed to private collectors.
Dawn Albinger, a Melbourne book dealer, describes the copy as a beautiful first edition of one of the 20th century's most important books exploring desire and sexual awakening.
'It was of course a banned book for many years, so many were seized and destroyed,' she says. 'It's a miracle this one survived.'
The grand folios and glittering first editions will draw their share of headlines, but for those with a taste for the prosaic, Tim White, owner of Melbourne' s Books for Cooks, has what he reckons are two must-haves for any foodie's library.
An 1861 first edition of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, a hefty Victorian tome that was a domestic bible for generations, is on sale for $2,000. It's not the priciest item, but its cultural legacy looms large, packed with recipes, etiquette and advice for the 'mistress of the house'.
More of a curiosity is a 1940s hand-mimeographed booklet of jungle cookery compiled by American missionaries working in Peru. For anyone needing advice on how to prepare monkey stew or capybara casserole, Jungle Cooking by Mary Baker is the kind of oddity that leaves a lasting impression – a bewildering snapshot of cultural improvisation.
'Most exhibitors will have at least one thing that's truly rare or strange,' White says.
'They may not always be expensive, but they'll be beautiful, eclectic, or tell stories you didn't know you needed to hear.'
The Melbourne Rare Book Fair is open from Thursday to Saturday this week at the University of Melbourne's Wilson Hall