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.

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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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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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Presentation photograph album with 48 portraits of Aboriginal men and women. Palmerston (Darwin), mid 1890s.
$165000
One of the most substantial archives of Foelsche’s work to have survived, this unique album contains a body of images of immense intrinsic importance and value, collectively forming a photographic record of the Larrakia, Woolna (Djerimanga), and Iwaidja communities at the close of the nineteenth century. Without question, Foelsche's portraits of Indigenous subjects taken in the Top End between the 1870s and 1890s are among the most visually compelling taken by any nineteenth-century photographer working in Australia in the colonial era.
The philosophy of Andy Warhol. (From A to B and back again). (Signed copy with drawing of a Campbell’s Soup can)
$7500
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975. First edition. Octavo, boards in dust jacket, pp 241; a fine copy; the half-title is signed and inscribed by Warhol, accompanied by an original pen drawing by the artist of a Campbell’s Tomato Soup can, his most iconic image. Andy Warhol’s seminal self-analysing memoir, filled with his reflections of youth and society which help give an insight into one of the most enigmatic and magnetic artistic figures of the twentieth century.
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