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 began buying and selling books in 1995, while still in high school. He is a member of the major international trade associations, and his business is conducted according to their high ethical standards. For many years Douglas has been a Board member of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Booksellers (ANZAAB); serving as President 2019 - 2023.

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 and the Pacific – and Australian art. 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 Birds of Australia
$750000
London : printed by Richard and John Taylor for the author, 1848. The first comprehensive survey of the birds of Australia, with hand-coloured illustrations and descriptions of 681 species, 328 of which were new to Western science and which Gould was the first to describe. The finest of all Australian colour plate books, and Gould’s ‘greatest achievement’ (Wantrup). Provenance: Sir Edward Charles Stirling (1848-1919), Director of the South Australian Museum 1895 - 1913
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Globe terrestre
$45000
Paris : L. C. Desnos & J. B. Nolin, 1760. A large and highly decorative French table globe from the mid-eighteenth century, rich in geographical detail that includes the voyages and discoveries of French, English, Dutch and Russian explorers. Provenance : Jean R. Perrette, New York based French businessman and collector, his bookplate pasted under the base of the globe.
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The avi-fauna of Australia : comprising Gould’s Birds of Australia and all other birds discovered in the Australian colonies since 1850
$35000
[Sydney?] : [G.J. Broinowski?], 1897. One of the rarest publications on Australian ornithology, one of only two known copies, the only one in private hands. In addition to its obvious desirability as an Australian colour plate book of almost unprocurable rarity, The avi-fauna of Australia is also meaningful insight into the debt Broinowski felt to Gould, and the respect he afforded the scientific community who contributed to our collective understanding of Australian ornithology. Provenance: Quentin Keynes (1921 – 2003), explorer, filmmaker, and great-grandson of Charles Darwin.
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Foreign field sports, fisheries, sporting anecdotes, &c. &c. [with] the Supplement, Field Sports, &c. &c. Of the Native Inhabitants of New South Wales
$6600
London : Published and sold by Edward Orme, 1814 & 1813. A magnificent illustrated work of 110 leaves of hand coloured aquatint plates, including 10 plates of Aboriginal subjects. An early issue, with the plates watermarked 1811. 'Importantly, this volume is the very first book on the Australian Aborigines, a fact not often acknowledged.' - Wantrup (2023), p. 368
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A treatise on the culture of the vine
$35000
Australia [i.e. Sydney] : R. Howe, Government Printer, 1825. The first edition of the first Australian book on wine. In the introduction Busby explains that Australia had a viable future as a major wine producing country, a statement that justifies the epithet for him of ‘prophet of Australian viticulture’.
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Te mau Episetole a te Aposetolo ra a Paulo.
$11000
Tahiti : i neia i te nenei raa a te mau misionari ra [colophon: printed at the Windward Mission Press], 1824. This slim volume comprises a selection of the Pauline Epistles translated into the Tahitian language by the Welsh Methodist schoolmaster and missionary John Davies (1772-1855), including Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. An extremely early and rare Tahitian imprint, the cradle of printing in the Pacific Islands.
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Zoological sketches. Made for the Zoological society of London, from animals in their vivarium, in the Regent’s park.
$45000
London : Henry Graves and Company, Printsellers to Her Majesty, 1861 [actually 1856] – 67. Two volumes, folio, 584 x 435 mm, 100 fine hand-coloured lithographed plates by Joseph Smit after Joseph Wolf, featuring numerous Australian birds and animals, including the now-extinct thylacine, Tasmanian wombat, Australian Mycteria, Red kangaroo, Hairy-nosed wombat, satin bower-bird, etc. “WITHOUT EXCEPTION, THE BEST ALL-ROUND ANIMAL PAINTER THAT EVER LIVED” (Sir Edwin Landseer).
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The three voyages of Captain James Cook
$50000
A magnificent set of the official accounts of Cook’s voyages, comprehensively illustrated with maps and plates. Finely bound by the venerable London firm of Morell in the late nineteenth century, this exceptional collection of the complete set of the voyages of Cook is distinguished by its full, wide margins and rich, dark impressions.
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A 10th-century manuscript fragment in Caroline (Carolingian) minuscule, with part of Jerome’s Preface to the Commentary on Matthew.
$7500
[Probably Northern France or Germany, tenth century]. Manuscript fragment on vellum, 312 x 216 mm (slightly irregular), recto with 32 complete lines of text in Caroline minuscule, comprising a portion of the last section of Jerome’s Preface to the Commentary on Matthew. Written in 398, the Preface was addressed to Eusebius of Cremona. Manuscript leaves from the first millennium are fairly uncommon in the market.
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Hyakumantō Dhāraṇī (百万塔陀羅尼) : an example of the earliest reliably datable printed text
$50000
Japan : Nara period [764 – 770 CE]. A rare example of the earliest printed text to have survived in Eastern or Western cultures that can be verifiably dated, predating the movable type of Gutenberg by some seven centuries. A great treasure and rarity in the history of the printed word.
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