Douglas Stewart Fine Books

    Member of ANZAAB - Australia

    Member of ABA - United Kingdom

    Aboriginal Australia Art: Australian Early Printing Norman Lindsay Pacific Voyages to Australia

Douglas Stewart Fine Books Pty. Ltd. is an antiquarian bookseller based in Melbourne, Australia. Our showroom is in High Street, Armadale, a precinct famous for its antique dealers, art galleries and bookshops. We buy and sell books both locally and around the world, working closely with clients to understand their collecting priorities and to source appropriate material. Our clients include libraries, galleries, museums, private collectors and fellow members of the trade. Since 2009 we have also exhibited regularly at leading international book fairs.

Douglas is a member of the major international trade associations, and his business is conducted according to their high ethical standards.

Our stock at Douglas Stewart Fine Books is diverse: we have rare books across all fields, but our strengths are in travel and exploration – particularly of Australia, the Pacific, and East Asia – as well as important books in the arts and sciences. In addition to rare books, we deal in all types of heritage material, including photographs, manuscripts, maps and globes, and fine art. Every month we issue a new online catalogue of New Acquisitions, and recommend that you join our email list to be the first to see what’s available. Please do not hesitate to contact us regarding any works you see online – we are always happy to assist with your enquiries.

Last, but not least, we buy books – from important single items to entire libraries – and we’d be pleased to provide advice on the best way to sell your collection.

Contact Information
Phone: +61 3 9066 0200
Website: http://www.douglasstewart.com.au
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720 High St Armadale, 3143 Australia Get Directions

Store Hours

Monday – Friday 10am – 6pm

Saturday 11am – 4pm

Closed public holidays

Highlights
The Sydney Gazette, and New South Wales Advertiser. Vols I – II, 1803-1805.
$325000
The earliest work printed in Australia that a collector can acquire, printed on the printing press which arrived on the First Fleet. The origins of printing and journalism in Australia : the most significant collection of early issues of Australia's first newspaper in private ownership.
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Relations de divers voyages curieux,
$62500
The first edition of each of the first four parts of Thévenot’s monumental work. Paris : Jacques Langlois, 1663-1664 [Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1666] [André Cramoisy, 1672]. The maps include the famous Tasman map of Australia (Hollandia Nova) in its fifth state (with rhumb lines and the Tropic of Capricorn, and ’19’ added at top right). The importance of this map can hardly be overstated: it is a cornerstone of Australian cartography, both as the earliest obtainable map of the region as well as the predominant depiction by which the West would know the island for about a century.
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A rare fourteenth-century medieval casket for a Book of Hours
$40000
This is an excellent example of a distinct corpus of book boxes from Catalonia (northeastern Spain), usually associated with the later fourteenth century. Made of wood, the exterior has typical incised leather decoration in a whorl pattern. The rosette decorations on the wrought-iron reinforcements are found on virtually all the known extant examples. The tawed leather interior, with its gently curved angles and smooth surface, is indicative of the precious contents which the container was designed to protect.
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Madman’s Island.
$11000
Ion Idriess' very first book, set in far North Queensland, signed by the author, in its original dustjacket. Of the 2200 copies printed in 1927, only 300 were sold, the rest presumably pulped. A legendary rarity in Australian literature.
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A Dictionary of the English Language
$35000
A pleasing example in original, unrestored binding of the first edition of Johnson's landmark dictionary - the first standard English dictionary. These massive volumes are rarely encountered in a fully contemporary binding due to the stress placed on the hinges and joints by the sheer weight of the text block in each volume. As Fleeman notes: '... few copies survive in booksellers' boards, and all such have restored spines, for when standing upright, the contents are too heavy for the binding cords'.
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Planisphère mobile
$3500
Paris : chez Bachelier, 1847. This rare scientific instrument is a portable, adjustable star chart that displays exactly which stars and constellations are visible in the sky at any given date and time, and which can be used without any prerequisite mathematical knowledge. It was designed by Ginot Desroys (or Des-Rois), a female scientific instrument maker and author of a number of works on astronomy and geography.
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Premier livre de l'histoire de la navigation aux Indes Orientales
$25000
Amsterdam : Cornille Nicolas, 1598. The first edition in French of the major account of the first Dutch voyage to the East Indies, which was undertaken by a fleet under the command of Cornelis de Houtman (1565-1599). This voyage would lead to the creation of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and result in Dutch colonisation and commercial monopoly of the Malay Archipelago that would endure for three centuries. Crucially, it paved the way for Dutch discoveries on the western and southern coasts of Australia, and New Zealand.
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Ongeluckige voyagie, van’t schip Batavia, nae de Oost-Indien.
$165000
Amsterdam : Jan Jansz, 1647. The first full account of the wreck of the Batavia, with the first printed European images of Australia, 'an especially outstanding rarity’ (Wantrup).
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Sensuyt lymaige du monde (The Image of the World)
$100000
Paris : Alain Lotrian, circa 1520. A remarkable work which blends historical fact with fantasy to create a pseudo-scientific text explaining the cosmology, geography, zoology and astronomy of the world. The present copy comes with extraordinary provenance, being the Columbus-Pichon-Fairfax Murray-Perrette copy, a volume that has been treasured in some of the world’s most distinguished private libraries over six centuries, including that of Ferdinand Columbus the son of explorer Christopher Columbus. Only three copies of this book are known, this is the only copy in private ownership.
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Chales Darwin's On the origin of species - first edition of 1859
$625000
An entirely unrestored, crisp and sharp copy of one of the most significant publications in the history of science, described as 'the most important biological work ever written'; and 'the most important single work in science'.
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