Book Fair will spice up your library
A browse around the 7th Sydney Book Fair in Kings Cross last weekend revealed some surprising titles.
Among the 20 stands from dealers of rare, out-of-print and collectible books were such gems as A study of incest in forbidden literature and Lesbian pulp fiction.
The Fair is organised by the Book Dealers’ Guild of NSW and has grown out of the first Kings Cross Book Fair initiated by the Kings Cross Arts Guild.
“There have been around 100 million titles published, but there are only about a million in print,” said organiser Gavin Harris from The Cross Art + Books.
Other titles on the stands included 100 banned books, an 1851 land grant in Windsor from Governor Denison, children’s book Babar at home and The answer by WJ Chidley, a well known Woollomooloo eccentric who in 1914 wore a dress because it was healthier and preached in The Domain that too much ‘coiton’ turned women into lunatics – with pictures to prove it.
Dealers also offered compendiums of old Batman and Superman comics alongside The flyaway highway by Norman Lindsay, going for $295.
At the top end was an 1813 edition documenting Boswell and Johnson’s tour of the Hebrides marked at $1,200. At the other end were books on Arnhem Land Bark Painting for $10 – some of which had recently been acquired by the Art Gallery of NSW.
The next fair will be in Bowral in October.
