Highlights at Firsts London 2025: Books in Bloom
Books in Bloom is this year's theme for Firsts London, the UK's leading international rare book fair at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea from 15th to 18th May 2025, with over 100 dealers from around the world bringing a wide range of rare books, manuscripts, maps and prints. Just a few days before the iconic Chelsea Flower Show starts around the corner, the rare book fair celebrates all things horticultural and will display a showcase of floral and botanical examples from print history, from early herbals to contemporary art books. The fair also has an extensive talks and tour programme (see details below).
Chelsea Physic Garden will have a presence throughout Firsts London, and visitors will be able to talk to members of their knowledgeable team about the garden's horticultural, educational and research activities, as well as their collection of books and manuscripts. Speakers from the garden will also feature in the Firsts London 2025 talks programme. Ticket holders to Firsts London will have the opportunity to visit the nearby Chelsea Physic Garden at a discounted rate. Please also see our article on their library in The Book Collector Summer 2025 issue.
Among the highlights of the botanical works on view are Basilius Besler's masterpiece, a first edition of Hortus Eystettensis, the first great florilegium, printed in an edition of only 300 copies in 1613. Shapero Rare Books has one with a price tag of £300,000, while Peter Harrington has a second edition of The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands by Mark Catesby (£275,000). There is also a talk on Saturday at 1:30 pm on this subject. At the other end of the spectrum is a beautiful Natural History Diary from 1902 with 34 hand-painted watercolours of wild flowers and accompanying text about each, which is being offered by Janette Ray Booksellers for £295. Visitors to the Sotheran's stand will be able to admire William Curtis's Flora Londinensis, which includes 'plates and descriptions of such plants as grow wild in the environs of London'. Curtis's original plates were by several artists including his great protegé Sydenham Edwards and the asking price is £20,000.
Robert Frew Rare Books will be bringing a book by the 'most distinguished and influential British gardener of the eighteenth century' (DNB), Philip Miller. Figures of the most Beautiful, Useful, and Uncommon Plants described in the Gardeners' Dictionary includes 300 hand-coloured engraved plates and this third edition was printed in 1809. It is priced at £10,500.
Quaritch has got an exceptional first edition of the earliest Italian regional floras, Flora Pedemontana by Carlo Allioni (1728–1804) – the 'Linnaeus of Piedmont' – in the extremely rare hand-coloured state, extensively annotated by Giovanni Battista Balbis (1765–1831), the author's pupil and successor at the Botanical Garden of the University of Turin. He has annotated nearly every page of the text volumes, providing for each species cross-references to Linnaeus and others. It's expected to sell in the region of £30,000.
Justin Croft brings a wonderful album of 82 drawings of London and its Environs attributed to Edward Augustus Giraud, dated 1795–98. This work shines a light on the pre-Regency days of a greener London. Almost every page contains surprising and unusual views and vantage points, and the album carries an asking price of £4,500.
Sky Duthie Rare Books will have not one but two exciting highlights. The first is the extensively embellished The Enchanted Plants by Maria Henrietta Montolieu (1822), which is extra-illustrated throughout with exquisite contemporary watercolours of flowers, butterflies and insects painted directly onto the text pages as well as on inserted leaves (£3,250). The second is a rare pair of extremely intricate paper-cut maps on black silk dated 1778 depicting North and South America, created during the midst of the American Revolution, most likely by a young woman, with the initials S.B. Depicting the Gulf of Mexico, it has an asking price of £12,500.
Other highlights from the fair:
● Tom W. Ayling is bringing a copy of Jacob Sprenger's Malleus Maleficarum (printed in Venice in 1574) with the most extraordinary provenance. It is in fact Casanova's copy, which he borrowed from the famous Compagnia de Gesú, the library of the Company Of Jesuits at the Collegio Romano, and where he added his inscription to the front pastedown.
● Archives Fine Books from Australia – a first-time participant – will bring a presentation copy of Winston S. Churchill's Marlborough, His Life and Times, inscribed by Winston Churchill to Geoffrey Hale with an accompanying letter from his wife Dame Clementine Spencer-Churchill and additional Churchilliana ($25,000 AUD, approx. £12,030).
● Beaux Books is launching a Performing Arts catalogue at the fair with a focus on 20th-century material related to ballet, theatre and opera. It includes a Romeo and Juliet of which only a small edition was printed. In 1936 Oliver Messel designed the set and costumes for the film of Romeo and Juliet produced by MGM in Hollywood. This charming edition of the play was published as a souvenir of Messel's work on the film and costs £450. Shakespeare's text is accompanied by high-quality reproductions of the original set and costume drawings created by Messel.
● Camden Lock Books, specialising in miniature books and also launching a catalogue at the fair, will be bringing a copy of one of the most celebrated micro-miniature 'fly's eye' books, only half the size of an ordinary postage stamp. Once the smallest printed book in the world, it is priced at £2,500. This version was printed in Italy in 1897.
● Clive A. Burden Ltd is going to show a presentation copy, priced at £5,500, of the first edition of an important early work on Vietnam published in Rome in 1650, containing the first printed map of the region. Alexandre de Rhodes (1591–1660) was a Jesuit priest born in Avignon, France, who devoted most of his life to missionary work in Vietnam.
● Ashton Rare Books is offering a very early publication with illustrations by Bawden and Ravilious displaying their talents at the age of 22 years! The Gallimaufry : A New Magazine Of The Students Of The R.C.A. Which Will Appear For This Once Only was published in 1925 and is complete and in very good condition with the original pictorial wrappers designed by Ravilious. This is a very scarce publication which very rarely turns up on the open market and carries an asking price of £1,850.
● Keel Row Bookshop is bringing a delicate floral souvenir handkerchief/napkin commemorating a Suffragette demonstration on 18th June 1910. It's a rare survivor from one of the key British protest movements of the 20th century and its asking price today is £950.
● Fold the Corner Books is bringing a special item to the fair – Hilary Mantel's original pine desk on which all of the author's novels since 1994 were written, including the celebrated Wolf Hall trilogy. Mantel once remarked that this very desk 'served me well, and has a great record of turning out prize winners'. To accompany the desk, there is a personal handwritten letter to the new owner, and an extensive collection of 25 of Mantel's canonical works, almost all of them signed or inscribed, some in limited editions. The collection is offered as a whole, priced at £40,000.
● Last, but not least, Ursus Books is coming over from the US with a very special copy of one of the most celebrated Surrealist objects, Marcel Duchamp's Le Surréalisme en 1947 in unusually fine unrestored condition. It carries an asking price of £57,500.
Talks programme:
Friday, 16 May
● Provenance and Book Collecting with David Pearson at 1:00 pm
● In Conversation with The Book Collector at 3:30 pm
● Gnome Kings, Fairy Folk and Little Elephants: An Evening of Storytelling with Charles van Sandwyk at 6:00 pm
Saturday, 17 May
● Cool Calligraphy – A Hands-On Session at 11:00 am (£18)
● Magna Carta: A Legacy at noon ● Curiosity and Travel: Mark Catesby's Natural History at 1:30 pm
● Old Books, New Knowledge: Three Hundred Years of the Chelsea Physic Garden Library at 3:00 pm
● Piracy and Buccaneering during the Golden Age of Piracy with Clare Marshall – a TOUR at 4:30 pm
Sunday, 18 May
● A History of Book Collecting with Andrea Mazzocchi – a TOUR at 11:30 am
● Modern First Editions with Les Ashton – a TOUR at 1:00 pm
Get your complimentary ticket here >
Firsts London Opening Times:
Thursday, 15 May 5:00 pm to 9:00 pm (VIP tickets)
Friday, 16 May 11:00 am to 8:00 pm
Saturday, 17 May 11:00 am to 6:00 pm
Sunday, 18 May 11:00 am to 5:00 pm
Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York's Square, King's Road, London SW3 4RY.