This month, we review 16 new bookseller catalogues. The variety is deep and wide. Several focus on travels and explorations. Maggs Bros. has a catalogue devoted to travels and voyages. Shapero Rare Books has a catalogue entitled "First Contacts," which refers to first visits by European travelers to distant lands. Hordern House focuses on exploration and discovery in Australia and the Pacific. Aquila Books targets the Polar regions and the Klondike, and those are mostly travel accounts since not many people live in those places.
A few catalogues this month fit into the category of Americana. David M. Lesser Fine Antiquarian Books has a new selection of rare Americana, mostly pamphlets, manuscripts, and other less than book-length material. Old West Books has a great selection of books on the American West, mostly realistic portrayals rather than exaggerated tales of gunslingers and such. Joe Rubinfine offers a collection of signed American historical documents. Just to the north of Americana lies Canadiana, and Patrick McGahern Books offers the Canadas, Canadiana, and angling titles.
Peter Harrington has a collection of some of the most important books you will find, being displayed at this year's high-end art fair Masterpiece 2018. The William Reese Company presents manuscripts, archives, and photographs. Jonathan A. Hill Bookseller features science, medicine, and natural history. Lorne Bair Rare Books targets social movements.
The Veatchs Arts of the Book features beautiful books and their creation. Langdon Manor Books' subjects are women, LGBTQ, Japanese Americans, and American internment camps. Samuel Gedge Ltd. has a summer list of antiquarian books, manuscripts, and ephemera. Brian Cassidy Bookseller offers... well, this one is just too hard to describe.
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 28th May 2026
Forum, May 28: Book of Hours.- Heures de nostre dame a l'usaige de Romme, Paris, Antoine Chappiel pour Germain Hardouin, [1504]. £6,000-8,000
Forum, May 28: Colonna (Francesco). La Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo, second edition, Venice, Sons of Aldus Manutius, 1545. £15,000-20,000
Forum, May 28:The Christ Child holding a crystal orb and surrounded by banderoles with devotional exhortations, on a leaf most probably from a Book of Hours, [Southern Netherlands, last decades of the fifteenth century]. £2,000-3,000
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 28th May 2026
Forum, May 28: Jackson (Shirley). The Haunting of Hill House, first English edition, signed presentation inscription from the author to Claude Fredericks, 1960. £2,000-3,000
Forum, May 28: Lennon (John). In His Own Write, first edition, first impression, signed by the author, 1964. £3,000-4,000
Forum, May 28: Doves Press.- Keats (John). [Poems], one of 200 copies on paper, Doves Press, 1914. £5,000-7,000
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 28th May 2026
Forum, May 28: Rodrigues (João Barbosa). Sertum Palmarum Brasiliensium, 2 vol., first and only edition, Brussels, 1903. £8,000-12,000
Forum, May 28: Newton (Sir Isaac). Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica…editio ultima, auctior et emendatior, Amsterdam, Sumptibus Societatis, 1714. £8,000-12,000
Forum, May 28: Kepler (Johannes). Ad Vitellionem paralipomena, wuibus astronomiae pars optica traditur, first edition, Frankfurt am Main, 1604. £5,000-7,000
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 28th May 2026
Forum, May 28: Tagliacozzi (Gaspare). De Curtorum Chirurgia per insitionem, libri duo, first edition, Venice, Gasparo Bindoni, 1597. £7,000-10,000
Forum, May 28: Lootsman (Jacobsz). The Lightning Colomne, or Sea-Mirrour, containing the Sea-Coasts of the Northern, Eastern and Western Navigation..., 1670. £8,000-12,000
Forum, May 28: Ribelles y Helip (José), Attributed to. An album comprising 33 finely executed watercolours of Spanish costume, bull-fighting scenes, and other genre subjects, [circa 1830]. £10,000-15,000
