This limited edition (200), of 124 plus pages, by Paul Feain (founder of the Cornstalk Bookshop and former president of ANZAAB) and Ellie Aroney (researcher) is a beautiful book, abounding in information for collectors of Idriess. Published in 2016, it is a collector's item in its own right (Nominal price $100: I have seen them for sale for as much as $199!). The main section is an alphabetical listing of all Idriess's books (not Gems!), with a short precis/ dates of publication/ number of copies for each book, with lovely illustrations of all the first edition covers, etc. There is also a chronological index of Idriess's works and the inside covers have a map showing the settings for his books.
The one glaring error I found, is that the dust jacket photos for The Silent Service are wrongly attributed: The 1944 photo is of the 1952 dust jacket and vice versa.
Feain and Aroney acknowledge (p.iv) that "Much about Idriess's publications continue to remain unknown or uncertain", and they then note a number of sources for their information, including Angus and Robertson records. But with some first editions worth hundreds of dollars, and some, hundreds more than second or third editions, it might have have useful to have a little more specifics about sources of information for some editions. For example, for Over the Range, Feain and Aroney note two October 1937 editions (of 10,000 and 5,000 copies) and two variants (presumably of the first October edition): One with a yellow wrap around the DJ stating First Printing 10,000 and just the date 1937 on the verso; the other, presumably without the DJ wrap around, has the words, First edition, November, 1937. 10,000 copies, on the verso. So the first question is: Is it October or November (only November is mentioned in the actual OTR editions)? And the second question is: Was there one contiguous first edition with two variants (as per Feain and Aroney - but which is first?) or, more likely, two "states'' of the first edition as per this site (Idriess.info)? More likely because there was an OTR that states, First edition, November, 1937. 10,000 copies; there was an OTR that just has the verso date, 1937; and the second edition OTR clearly states, First edition, November, 1937. Second edition, November, 1937; as does the third edition. Similarly for Prospecting for Gold (see Prospecting for Gold - the Missing year? in Q and A in this forum) and some other editions - it would have been nice to know the type and reliability of the source that Feain and Aroney have utilised.
But despite these quibbles, Ion Idriess: An Annotated and Illustrated Bibliography is still a highly recommended book for any Idriess collector - or even as a nicely presented and very collectable limited edition book in its own right.
