Antiquities & Oddities

//Antiquities & Oddities
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  • An annual for under tens, with stories and puzzles, poems and articles by Jean Matheson, Claire Moore and others. With colour plates, black and white illustrations and monochromatic comics.
  • A compilation of over 6000 quotations arranged thematically; a great reference for speeches, essays and letter writing as well as for trivia quiz and  crossword buffs. On actors - Marlon Brando: An actor's a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening. Or the home? Cicero: What is more agreeable than one's own home? Or there's Spencer Tracy's memory of the lean times in his life, before stardom: There were times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails. And from Bert Leston Taylor, journalist: A bore is a man who, when you ask how he is, tells you. With an introduction by Reginald Hill.
  • With loads of features and stories from Norman Collin, Noel Streatfield, Eleanor Farjeon and Hilton Brown; loads of articles and puzzles; projects and cartoons; riddles and jokes; fabulous colour and black and white illustrations.
  • In this volume: The Adventure of 'The Three Dead Smugglers', Rose Macaulay; The Strange Adventures of A Sun Umbrella, Kay Martin; Netball For Girls, Cicely M. Read; The Disappearance Of Daisy Cheyne, M.B. Sandford; A Treasure From The Snow, Elsie J. Oxenham; A Caravan Holiday, Bertha Leonard; Lawn Tennis Hints, W. Haines Jull; The Lucky Leaf, Florence Bone; The Toy Theatre, A. Waddingham Seers; Dragon House and Trial By Jury, Katharine L. Oldmeadow; A New Hobby, L.G. Fitzpatrick; Curio Collecting, Ethel Talbot; A Castle In Spain, Guy Stirling; The Princess Nuala, Katherine Tynan; Book Parties and The Tree Of Liberty, Violet M. Methley; A Handful Of Three, E.L. Haverfield; Touch-Ball, R.L.G. Goodchild; The Witch's Spell, E.E. Cowper; Hidden Treasure, Jessie Leckie Herbertson; Decoration In Water Colour, Grace Lodge Clifton-Shelton; Keeping A Nature Diary, A. Waddingham Seers; All The Veronicas and Experiments In Sweet Making, Alice Massie; Three Rainy Day Games For Juniors, Doris Wood; Hints To Amateur Actors, C. Bernard Rutley; A Visit From Bashio Bazouks, Kay Martin; Let's Have A Play, Katharine Oldmeadow; Twilight Speaks, Blanche Jones;   A Fool's Errand, Catherine A. Morin and Maud Morin; Athletics For Girls, Frank N. Punchard.
  • Cooper, Australia's first acknowledged playwright, lived a full life:  Actor, journalist, politician, a bankrupt who once fought a duel in Sydney with his brother in law.  He wrote popular farces, comedies and sensation dramas and was the first Australian playwright to have his work produced overseas.  Colonial Experience is one of only two plays which survive.  Contains a wealth of information about Cooper and the entire play text.
  • Published in 1940, Daphne du Maurier turned from fiction to write the true stories of everyday English people who, while following the common round of their daily lives, have given their best to their country and done deeds of gallantry in their respective spheres in a time of war. The mother who triumphed over bereavement, the London grocer who settled labor disputes at the pithead - all were able to turn the difficulties of war time into opportunities to spread a spirit of victory on the Home Front.
  • First published in 1822,  de Quincey's best-known work is still in print. Though seemingly offering the reader poignant memories, temporal digressions and random anecdotes, the Confessions is a work of great sophistication and rated as one of the most impressive and influential of all autobiographies. He evidences a nervous self-awareness as he scrutinises his own life in an effort to answer that eternal question: Who am I?  The horrors of addiction are not a large part of the whole yet in its day it was regarded as a 'lucrative piece of sensational journalism, albeit published in a more intellectually respectable organ' ( London Magazine). Written in an almost romantic, self-reflective neo-classical style it still today reaches out to the reader. 
  • Cop This Lot: Nino Culotta: Book II of They're A Weird Mob. Nino, now an Australian with the help of his mates and Kay, his missus, has a chance to get a few laughs at the expense of workmates Joe and Dennis as they accompany him on a trip to Italy to visit Nino's parents.  Joe and Dennis have never left Sydney and the plan is to go by 'plane and cargo ship then buy a cheap car in Germany to drive to Italy.  At the Culotta family villa, Nino's father, a crusty and misbehaving patriarch who loves to conduct local feuds, is only concerned that Nino and Kay have not been 'properly' married by an Italian priest. Nino's mother is worried that the children will be eaten by kangaroos. By the time they return to Sydney, Joe and Dennis have learnt a smattering of several European languages and despite their working-class 'Ocker' background, have acquired a veneer of European sophistication, preferring wine to beer and Italian suits to Jack Howe singlets - a veneer, of course, that doesn't last too long! Illustrated by 'Wep'. There Was A Kid: John O'Grady: Author John O'Grady's  (Nino Culotta) father, with no practical experience and very little money, threw up city life and became a farmer - he bought his land, worked hard, applied the latest scientific methods - and went broke.  Yet O'Grady has wonderful memories of growing up on the farm near Tamworth and recounts them all here with his usual wry humour. Illustrated by Collinridge Rivett.
  • June 2, 1953.  It's a great day for the Commonwealth - it's the coronation day of the young, beautiful Elizabeth II.  Will Clagg, steelworker, his wife Violet, their two children Johnny and Gwinny and Grumbling Granny are determined to see this wondrous event.  No matter how long the day, nor the obstacles to be encountered...Each member of the family learns a great deal on this important day, and returns home laden with life-long gifts they never expected.
  • The plays of Noel 'The Master' Coward still draw audiences today.  This is a compilation of the Mermaid Theatre's Cowardy Custard which brought together the best of Noel Coward, as well as some of his less well-known songs and poems.  Beautifully illustrated with colour and black and white drawings and photos.
  • When Jerusha Abbott, an eighteen-year-old girl living in an orphan asylum, was told that a mysterious millionaire had agreed to pay for her education, it was like a dream come true. For the first time in her life, she had someone she could pretend was "family." But everything was not perfect, for he chose to remain anonymous and asked that she only write him concerning her progress in school. Who was this mysterious gentleman and would Jerusha ever meet him?
  • The story of a little French orphan who is spotted by a wealthy socialite playboy who offers, on a whim, to sponsor her care at the orphanage.  But she never sees him - all she has seen is his long shadow on the wall and she calls him 'Daddy Long-Legs'.  She writes him letters of gratitude; he never writes back, yet continues to sponsor her.  When she goes to college, they finally meet.  This book was made into a very popular film with Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron.
  • Jerusha Abbott is the oldest orphan in the John Grier Home. When her future is discussed, one of the Trustees offers to finance her through college so that she can become a writer. The conditions: she must write to him once a month and tell him of her progress and she can only know him as Mr John Smith as he wishes his identity to remain a secret. Jerusha - now called Judy - names him Daddy-Long-Legs because her single glimpse of his shadow reminds her of a spider. Here are Judy's college days letters to 'Daddy-Long-Legs.' Cover art from  a photograph by Houston Rogers showing actress Jean Carson as Judy in the play Love from Judy based on the book.
  •  The trip with the football team is a tradition and a rite of passage: the first trip where they stay at motels rather than being billeted, someone's going to lose his virginity, everyone's expected to get drunk... On this trip The Sandman makes a significant discovery - which he can't disclose, because then it won't be his secret anymore. Sandy is a natural bus clown- not the leader of the group, but the one who entertains the others and performs his funny noises if the cool players at the back of the bus get bored, such as the Pterodactyl, the Lip Trumpet, Compressed Air Walking.... This will resonate with blokes who grew up in Australia - specifically Newcastle - in the early to mid seventies.  Politically incorrect cover art by Michael Bell, The Sandman, Archibald Prize finalist 2000.
  • Includes such Aussie gems as:  Picking Out the Melon Pips; The Bush Wedding; The Old Bark Hut; Ya' Stupid Galah!; Much Ado About a 'Roo; Anzac Day and many more unique true-blue poems. The Apex Club of Kyabram issued the first 'Dinkum Aussie Award' for Bush Verse in 1988 and were so pleased at the response, they went for it and 'had another go' in 1989.  Who knows - some of the coves in here might be famous writers by now!
  • A guide book for those things that could only be found in Australia:  Snake Gully's 'Dad and Dave' statues near Gundagai; the famous 'Dog on the Tuckerbox'; The Big Cod at Tocumwal and the Big Yabby at Wentworth; The Big Sapphire near Anakie and much more...and not forgetting the infamous 'Furphy.'    This book is definite proof that Australians really are a 'weird mob'. Illustrated with cartoons and colour and black and white photographs.
  • An essential guide to Australian rhyming slang drawn from oral sources in and around Sydney. Three of the author's best informants were mates who'd spent some time as guests of Her Majesty in Sydney's Long Bay Jail. Two other prolific sources were a couple of retired shearers. Great as a social document or just for fun - or even as a gift to a 'New Australian'   so they know the meaning of such phrases as He did a Harold Holt (bolted, vanished); Here comes the John Hops/Johns (cops, the police); I'm on me Pat Malone; I'm alone; The saucepan lids are home on holidays - The kids are home on holidays plus many more.
  • The title of this novelty item is from a saying of King Edward VII:  "I don't care what the people do, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses."  Macdonald was frequently compared to humourist Lennie Lower, although Macdonald's humour is more sophisticated.  He also loved the comic-scope of  'the little bloke who gets pushed around'. Therefore, we see our hero being browbeaten by his bank manager, getting lost in the Paris underground, in Darlo Police Station and musing on such diverse topics as literature, travelling, eating and drinking.  With an introduction by 'Nino Culotta'. Illustrated by Clarrie King. Very Australian humour.
  • Obadiah and Elizabeth ‘flabbergasted frightfully’ when they heard their three children, Daniel, Walter and Sarah, were considering leaving England and joining the goldrush to the Antipodes - the Australian Goldfields. The children expected to find gold and to make ‘their everlasting fortune.’ Their parents could only see the terrible dangers involved in what they considered ‘a foolhardy adventure.’  Obadiah and Elizabeth concluded a warning letter they wrote to Walter, Daniel and Sarah with this desperate plea: PLEASE, PLEASE, DO NOT GO TO THE GOLDFIELDS.  This is an entertaining look at life on the goldfields in the 1850s from the journey from 'Home' to the Antipodes; the scenes of drunkneness and brawling that greeted the shocked Britishers;  the intriguing crimes of interfering with your own clock, severing a clothesline, kite flying and why they were deemed to be criminal; the women of the goldfields and what life was like for children and school students. For teenage readers and upwards. Illustrated  by Carson Ellis.
  • Said Sir Gilbert Parker: 'Who the original of ‘Donovan Pasha’ was I shall never say, but he was real. There is, however, in the House of Commons today a young and active politician once in the Egyptian service, and who bears a most striking resemblance to the purely imaginary portrait which Mr. Talbot Kelly, the artist, drew of the Dicky Donovan of the book. This young politician, with his experience in the diplomatic service, is in manner, disposition, capacity, and in his neat, fine, and alert physical frame, the very image of Dicky Donovan, as in my mind I perceived him; and when I first saw him I was almost thunderstruck, because he was to me Dicky Donovan come to life. There was nothing Dicky Donovan did or said or saw or heard which had not its counterpart in actual things in Egypt. The germ of most of the stories was got from things told me, or things that I saw, heard of, or experienced in Egypt itself. The first story of the book—‘While the Lamp Holds Out to Burn’—was suggested to me by an incident which I saw at a certain village on the Nile, which I will not name. Suffice it to say that the story in the main was true. Also the chief incident of the story, called ‘The Price of the Grindstone—and the Drum’, is true. The Mahommed Seti of that story was the servant of a friend of mine, and he did in life what I made him do in the tale. ‘On the Reef of Norman’s Woe’, which more than one journal singled out as showing what extraordinary work was being done in Egypt by a handful of British officials, had its origin in something told me by my friend Sir John Rogers, who at one time was at the head of the Sanitary Department of the Government of Egypt.'

     
  • This novel spans 130 years and follows the line of women of the Wrotham family, beginning with Sabrina in 1806. The daughter of a socially disgraced, sadistic roué, she is sponsored into 'Society' by her step-aunt - after having had some good manners vigorously instilled in her and her tomboyish ways smoothed out. Her brother Prior's marriage and production of children play a part in keeping the Wrotham name going. The next Wrotham woman is Clare - her brother Anthony's marriage to Harriet brings Charlotte to the line and the last is Gillian Rose, known as 'Jill'. The diaries and letters of the women are fictitious but the times in which the story is set are not, and many historical characters and events of England are brought to the story. As the generations overlap, with the members of each generation subscribing to the beliefs of their day, there is little sentimental romance involved - just a very good story, tinted with gentle romance and enhanced by the backdrop of historic reality.
  • Meet Nigel Molesworth and his 'grate frend' Peason, veteran pupils at St. Kustards School for Boys.  Between them they cover all aspects of boarding school life: Masters At a Glance, Kanes I Have Known; Skool Prospectus; How to Torture Parents and other survival skills. This volume 'contanes the full lowdown on skools, swots, sneeks, cads, prigs, bulies, headmasters, criket, foopball, dirty roters, funks, parents, masters, wizard wheezes, weeds, aple pie beds and various other chizzes...' (That's Nigel's and Pearson's spelling, by the way - not mine...)   Written specifically as a 'guide to school life for tiny pupils and their parents' From the creators of St. Trinians and with hilarious illustrations by Ronald Searle.
  • It's a large helping of Pythonesque madness as Palin and Jones cover all the really important things: Alcoholic Dogs, Bournemouth, Conjuring, Dancing (Ballroom), Essay (School), The Famous Five  Go Pillaging, Grannies, Heroism (across the Andes by Frog), I.Q., Music (Dr Fegg's Nasty Symphony), Parlor Games (Pass The Bengal Tiger), Questions (Silly), Rats (Pantomime), String (1001 Things to do With), Things To Stick Your Head Into, Violent Anger and Why It Is Good For You, What the Queen Had For Lunch and Zsa Zsa Gabor's Sex Life. Illustrated and comes complete with a variety of instructions and methods of how to destroy the book.  https://cosmiccauldronbooks.com.au/p/brand-new-monty-python-papperbok-graham-chapman-john-cleese-eric-idle-terry-jones-michael-palin-terry-gilliam/ https://cosmiccauldronbooks.com.au/p/lady-cottingtons-pressed-fairy-book-terry-jones/
  • The Venture, an old Trident nuclear sub retrofitted for research has picked up an ancient and powerful artifact on the ocean floor and brought it on board.  Called the Hades Stone, it allows the dead to return and join the living. Evil things appear in this world - phantoms. demons and an ancient being called the Stone Keeper, the guardian of the Hades Stone. The demons attack, killing the crew. The portal inside the Hades Stone fills the submarine with the accursed souls of the past.  Jack Bavaro, head of Interceptor Force, has gathered his best operatives  they know the submarine has been commandeered and they know they cannot just torpedo it - a navy attack submarine that tried was instantly destroyed by the demon-ridden submarine. They must enter the Venture and do battle  at the bottom of the ocean.
  • Philip Kimberley, top ranking British intelligence officer rocks the international spy community by defecting to Russia. However, not trusting his new colleagues, Kimberly leaves behind a hidden dossier exposing the KGB's spy network as insurance.  Years later, drunk and broken, Kimberly is given one last assignment by his KGB superiors - to undergo extensive surgical alteration and re-enter the UK to retrieve the dossier.  With news of Kimberley's death leaked to the media the defector slips back into the U.K. unrecognisable as his former self. With documents in hand Kimberley begins a dangerous game of intrigue that plays MI6 against the KGB with deadly results.  But then Kimberley's nemesis Admiral Scaith brings the former spy's daughter into the game, the rules suddenly change as the final pieces fall into place.
  • Hundreds of hopefuls congregate at a cattle call for Broadway dancers. Sour director, Zach and his brusque assistant whittle down the ranks until they're left with 16 dancers. Each one has a story - some are tragic, some are comic - and explain their love of dance. Tension mounts when Cassie - once both a big star and the director's lover but now desperate for a part - auditions. But Zach must choose only the best for his show. Musical.  
  • This is a screen adaptation of Orwell's Keep The Aspidistra Flying. Comstock's struggle in 1930s England - that's George Comstock, budding poet and suitably angry young man - to write poetry and be a free man means that he must throw up his job as a star copywriter at an illustrious advertising firm to work in a dingy book shop for far less money. It also means that he must sponge off his hard-working sister, girlfriend and wealthier friends, while calling every man 'comrade' and loudly deploring the 'God of Money' - not to mention loudly abhorring that eternal symbol of stodgy respectability, the dreaded aspidistra.  George has to descend into the squalid, bed bug-ridden depths of disreputable Lambeth to prove his point, while his patient and ever-practical girlfriend Rosemary stands by and waits for him to come to his senses. With many guest appearances by well-loved English character actors.