For December, we review 12 new bookseller catalogues as the holiday season heats up with new offerings. For those interested in travels as they were in another time, Shapero Rare Books has a catalogue they call “From the Mediterranean to the Himalayas.” Antiquariat Kainbacher offers a selection of “Reisen und Expeditionen,” which is German for “Travels and Expeditions.” If you're interested in the Far East of long ago, Jonathan A. Hill Bookseller features Japanese, Chinese, and Korean manuscripts and scrolls, most very old.
If you prefer to hang out in America, Primary Sources has a catalogue of “Uncharted Americana.” These are items of various types of works on paper related to important events in American history through the yes of regular folks who lived through them. David M. Lesser Fine Antiquarian Books also has a selection of various types of paper of rare Americana, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries.
For those who focus on the book arts, so do the Veatches Arts of the Book, and they have just released their 100th catalogue. The Kelmscott Bookshop also offers much in the way of the book arts and private presses, as a bookseller named after the Kelmscott Press should, but they also offer material related literature, history, travel, illustrated books and more. Honey & Wax Booksellers has material in the book arts too, but lots more in a mix of uncommon items.
If you collect the most important books in the history of Western civilization, Clavreuil has what you are looking for – a selection of books all of which appeared in Printing and the Mind of Man.Whitmore Rare Books offers great literature and other types of written material.
W. C. Baker Rare Books & Ephemera has a collection of art and illustration from one of the quirkiest, half macabre, half humorous, writer-illustrators ever, Edward Gorey. For the very bizarre, Garrett Scott, Bookseller, offers a catalogue called “The Sewage System is a Deception.” Scott specializes not so much in sewage systems but very weird printed items.
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
