Astrolabe Booksellers
Member of ANZAAB - Australia
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Australiana
Fine & Rare Books
History
Tasmaniana
Astrolabe Booksellers has been operating in Hobart since 1987, offering a range of rare and out-of-print books, specialising in Tasmanian material. After many years in Hobart's Salamanca Place, we are now primarily an online business, although most of our (dwindling) stock is on display and for sale from an antique shop in North Hobart
Highlights
MEREDITH, Mrs. [Louisa Anne]: Grandmamma's Verse Book for Young Australia. Part 1.
$950
Printed for the Author by W. Fletcher: Hobart Town, 1878...and sold also by J. Walch & Sons, Hobart Town, Walch Brothers & Birchall, Launceston, and George Robertson, Melbourne & Sydney. 12mo. viii, 56, small 'All Rights Reserved' slip pasted to foot of title-page and the author's printed 'Advertisement' dated Orford, 1878, advising direct purchase/postage rates in the absence of an English agent for the book. Cloth-backed printed white boards, cut flush, all edges red. The backstrip is quite worn, with a few small holes, and the stitching is a little slack in places, but a good clean copy.
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WILSON, Hardy. Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania.
$1500
Published by the Author: Sydney, 1924. #208 of 1000 copies, signed by Hardy Wilson. Large folio. [vi], 10, IV, 50 tipped-in collotype plates, with titled tissue guards. Original quarter parchment and batik boards, gilt titles and bat device on the upper (without the dustwrapper, as usual). The spine is rubbed along the joints, which are just starting to split a little at the head and tail, the spine itself a little discoloured and with some slight damp-marking; the edges of the boards slightly rubbed. The volume is now protected by a new mylar wrapper. Internally in very nice clean condition.
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Land Grant document : 8 October 1816. Granted to THOMAS ALLAN LASCELLES, 800 acres in Van Diemen’s Land, signed by Gov. Lachlan Macquarie.
$1750
Land Grant document : 8 October 1816. Granted to THOMAS ALLAN LASCELLES, 800 acres in Van Diemen’s Land, in the District of Sussex bounded to the north by the Iron Creek stream, on the west and south sides by AYRES and MARY GEILS farms and on the north a line of 50 chains from the SE corner of Geils on the east by a north line of 126 chains to the Iron Creek Stream. Registered in Sydney, 22 April 1818. Signed by Governor LACHLAN MACQUARIE and countersigned by H.C. Antill [Henry Colden Antill, aide-de-camp to the Governor] and Joseph Cowgill. Please enquire for further details
Land Grant document, 3 February 1823 : in favor of THOMAS GEORGE GREGSON, 300 acres in Van Diemen’s Land, in the District of Bath... Registered in Sydney, 30 June 1823. Signed by SIR THOMAS BRISBANE.
$1000
Manuscript on vellum, with seal. 320x460mm, folded. In very good clean condition. *** For Gregson, a volatile political figure in VDL, one of the 'Patriotic Six' and (very briefly) Tasmania's second Premier, see ADB 1. The land was near Jericho, on the Jordan River, and the grant included the services of three transported convicts. Gregson was alleged to have bribed the surveyor G.W. Evans, with a piano, to swear that there was insufficient land adjacent to his first grant for an additional location, thus allowing him to take later grants in a more favourable location (this being one of them?)
Manuscript promissory note for £67.10 : ROBERT LATHROP MURRAY to Derwent Bank, 13 January 1845.
$850
Manuscript on a slip of paper 105x205mm. The text reads:
Hobart Town January 13 : 1845 – / Three months after date I promise to pay to the order of the Managing Director of the Derwent Bank the sum of Sixty Seven Pounds Ten Shillings for value recd / £67.10 / [signed] R.L. Murray /Payable at the Derwent Bank / [signature indecipherable] / Due 16/4/45. Due 16 April’ written later in another hand across top of the document, faint ink stamp (of the bank?), a number written across the text, ‘R. Murray’ written on verso.
[BACON, Francis.] Apophthegms New and Old, collected by the Right Honourable, Francis Lo. Vervlam, Viscount St. Alban.
$2500
Printed for Hanna Barret and Richard Whittaker, and are to be sold at the Kings Head in Pauls Church-yard: London, 1625. 12mo. [ii] (title, verso blank), 308pp (last blank). The title within a narrow double-ruled border, text within a wider double-ruled border, leaving a blank marginal column (for notes?). Contemporary full calf, neatly rebacked with the unlettered spine laid down. Hinges strengthened with Japanese tissue. Lacks a preliminary blank leaf? Title-page is slightly off-centre and a little rubbed along its head edge. The text somewhat offset on a few late pages.
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FREYCINET, Louis de. Reflections on New South Wales 1788-1839.
$2750
Hordern House: Sydney, 2001. Translated by Thomas Cullity, assisted by Katherine Pratt, and Jean and Bernice Pasquier. Special issue: #28 of 28 copies, printed on large paper and bound in quarter vellum and olive green glazed linen by Newbold and Collins. (The standard edition was itself limited to 300 copies and quickly sold out.) Large 4to. xxii, 670pp, with a portrait, twenty maps and illustrations and eight colour plates. A fine clean copy, still with the publisher's plain paper wrapper. ***Freycinet's examination of the history and progress of the colony during its first 52 years.