Manuscripts
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# 50718
EYRE, Edward (1815-1901)
Edward Eyre, explorer of the Australian interior and colonial administrator: presentation signature with accompanying autograph note, dated 20 April 1867.
Original ink signature of Edward Eyre, on front section of a small bifolium of notepaper (103 x 93 mm), with an autograph covering note by Eyre on the third side, written in the third person: ‘Mr. Eyre has much pleasure in presenting his autograph for Miss Christy’s collection as requested in Mr. Christy’s letter of …
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![[CIRCUS HISTORY] "Cleopatra", snake handler in the "Wild Australia" show : holograph letter, to her cousin. Java, August 1918.](https://douglasstewart.com.au/app/uploads/2026/07/2026_DSFB_4768-300x300.jpg)
# 50908
[DRESCHER, Harriett, aka "CLEOPATRA"]
[CIRCUS HISTORY] “Cleopatra”, snake handler in the “Wild Australia” show : holograph letter, to her cousin. Java, August 1918.
Manuscript in ink, 4 pages, octavo (210 x 140 mm); headed ‘Permanent postal address: Savoy Hotel, Calcutta, India. 8-8-’18’ (but actually written in Java), the letter is written by “Cleopatra” (real name Harriett Drescher) and addressed to her cousin Louis (Jessop) in England; it is signed at the foot ‘Always, Cleo, xxxxx’; original folds, short …
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# 50828
SCHWEIGHOFER, Felix; MAYER, Otto (photographer)
Felix Schweighofer, Austrian actor : real photo portrait postcard with signed autograph message to opera librettist Emil Norini. Blasewitz (Dresden), July 1907.
Gelatin silver print photograph, printed on postcard stock, 137 x 87 mm; in the negative are the photographer’s handwritten details lower left ‘Otto Mayer, Dresden’, and facsimile signature of Felix Schweighofer lower right; lower margin recto with Schweighofer’s handwritten note explaining that the portrait is of him in character as August Nippes for the comedy …
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# 50829
ANGERER, Victor
Gisela Timony, Viennese actress : signed portrait photograph, inscribed for opera librettist Emil Norini. Vienna, April 1903.
Wien : Victor Angerer, [1903]. Silver albumen print photograph in cabinet card format, 163 x 103 mm; signed by the sitter in ink in the image lower right: ‘Gisi Timony’; verso with the Angerer studio imprint and with a presentation inscription by Timony: ‘Meinen lieben Collegen Herrn Emil Norini, zur freundlichen Errinerung, Wien 5. IV. …
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# 50798
JACK, Kenneth (1924 - 2006)
Kenneth Jack’s holograph manuscript copy of Aaron Berkman’s book on art theory ‘Art and Space’
[Melbourne] : Kenneth Jack, 1953. Original holograph manuscript in brown ink, foolscap, title leaf, pp. 72, copying the text ‘Art and Space’ by Aaron Berkman (“condensed from the book”), illustrated with over 30 small pen and ink drawings describing the theories of the text, including reproduction sketches after Picasso, Rembrandt, Braque, Monet etc., tape to …
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# 49803
EMBLING, Sabina Howitt [&] SINGLETON, Violet Etta
Commonplace book compiled by a young Melbourne woman (1867-78) with later entries by her daughter (1889-1890).
An astonishing artefact of Melbourne social history, in which the intimate voices of two young women – a mother and daughter from one of the city’s most elite families of the second half of the nineteenth century – cry, whisper and sing from the pages, after having been lost to history for over 130 years. …
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# 50544
[MAKER UNKNOWN]
“A Lady’s Dressing Case”
[English, 1820-1840]. Handmade amusement. Single card sheet representing a lady’s vanity case, 190 x 230 mm, the recto covered in green paper, with manuscript title at head “A Lady’s Dressing Case”, the nine “drawers” below in the form of paper flaps with manuscript labels describing items associated with a lady’s toilet – in other words, …
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![[CRIMEAN WAR] Free frank front signed by Lord FitzRoy Somerset, later Field Marshal and 1st Baron Raglan, one of the main protagonists in the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854.](https://douglasstewart.com.au/app/uploads/2026/06/2026_DSFB_4093-300x224.jpg)
# 50591
SOMERSET, FitzRoy James Henry
[CRIMEAN WAR] Free frank front signed by Lord FitzRoy Somerset, later Field Marshal and 1st Baron Raglan, one of the main protagonists in the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854.
Free frank front, 85 x 125 mm, dated at London, 8 December 1828, addressed to ‘Mrs. Cuffe, St. Wolston’s, Celbridge, Ireland’, and signed lower left ‘FitzRoy Somerset’; laid down on a section cut from a leaf removed from a nineteenth-century autograph album (see note on provenance below), with an annotation by the album’s compiler identifying the …
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# 50248
LOUIS XV, King of France
Lettres patentes concernant les Missions Étrangères.
[France, c.1773]. Manuscript in ink, [5] pp., folio; extremely well preserved; bound in modern papered boards with gilt-lettered red leather title label to the front; ex libris label of H. P. Kraus to front pastedown. One of the most important institutions in the history of evangelisation in Asia, the Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP), or …
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# 50338
THORNE (WATKINS), Rosalie Ann (1850-1927)
Rosalie Ann Thorne (later Watkins), of Rose Bay and Parramatta : a substantial archive of unique manuscript ephemera, 1850s-1890s, including family correspondence and material relating to the homeschooling of the Thorne and Watkins children.
Provenance: Rosalie Ann Thorne (1850-1927); Elizabeth Cecilia McNally, aka “The Duchess of Spring Hill” (1909-1996), legendary Brisbane antiques dealer and collector; private collection, Queensland. As the archive is so large, we have arranged it into four main sections catalogued under alphabetical headings, A – D (see below). ROSALIE ANN THORNE AND HER FAMILY Rosalie (“Rose”) Ann …
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# 34554
LEE, Sydney Williams (1841-1917)
Manuscript letter from architect Sydney Williams Lee to artist John Seymour Lucas, March 1879, with an offer to purchase “The Gordon Riots”, the painting which was acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales at the Melbourne Exhibition in 1881.
Manuscript in ink on wove writing paper, octavo bifolium (179 x 112 mm), [4] pp, written on the first side only; headed ‘4 Burston Road, Putney. March 5th 1879’; signed at the foot ‘Sydney W. Lee’; the note is addressed ‘My dear Lucas’ (John Seymour Lucas, English historical genre painter, 1849-1923); Lee offers to buy …
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# 39210
B. SMITH & SON
Manuscript commercial letter addressed to John Fairfax & Sons, Sydney, New South Wales, from B. Smith & Son, London, 27 July 1863.
Manuscript in ink, 2 pp., quarto, on blue laid paper watermarked ‘A. C. & S.’; duplicate commercial letter headed ‘7 Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, London, July 27th 1863’, addressed to the publishing firm of Messrs J. Fairfax & Sons, Sydney; written and signed by Henry Durrant on behalf of B. Smith & Son, ink …
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# 40313
[GREAT BRITAIN. ROYAL NAVY]
A List of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. Navy Office, 1st October 1794.
Large octavo (230 x 150 mm), in the original Admiralty-style binding of straight-grain red morocco with elaborate gilt border incorporating stars, wreaths and cornerpieces, spine gilt in six compartments; inner dentelles; all edges gilt; original marbled endpapers; engraved title-page with date in manuscript 1st October 1794 (although the list has additions to 1801); 200 pp., …
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![[OTTOMAN EMPIRE] Passport of safe conduct for travel to Malta issued to Captain Benjamin Adams (17th Light Dragoons) by the British consul at Alexandria, 17 May 1823.](https://douglasstewart.com.au/app/uploads/2025/11/2025_DSFB_7153-300x300.jpg)
# 49083
Peter LEE (BRITISH CONSUL, ALEXANDRIA)
[OTTOMAN EMPIRE] Passport of safe conduct for travel to Malta issued to Captain Benjamin Adams (17th Light Dragoons) by the British consul at Alexandria, 17 May 1823.
[Alexandria in Egypt : British Consulate, 1823]. Lithographed pro-forma document with manuscript entries, 270 x 385 mm, on wove paper watermarked with an Eagle and FAG in roman (cf. Edward Heawood, Watermarks, Mainly of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Hilversum, 1950, p. 24); embossed paper seal of the British Consulate, Alexandria in Egypt intact at lower left; signed …
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![[Anzac] Australians! ... From a South African girl's point of view.](https://douglasstewart.com.au/app/uploads/2025/01/2025_DSFB_0208-300x300.jpg)
# 45894
[CAMPBELL, Ethel Margaret, aka "The Durban Signaller"]
[Anzac] Australians! … From a South African girl’s point of view.
[Durban : s.n., 1916-17]. Postcard, 90 x 135 mm; recto with lithographed patriotic poem titled Australians!, penned by a young Durban woman, mentioning HMAT Demosthenes, and with lines such as ‘the deathless name of “Anzac”, that thrills from Pole to Pole‘, ‘I’d rather a drunk Australian, than a wealthy Durban funk‘, and ‘We stand on the …
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![[POLYNESIA] Original letter containing vivid descriptions of Tahiti and Rarotonga. August, 1934.](https://dsfb-wp.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/app/uploads/2018/01/11115220/2017_DSFB_5360-300x300.jpg)
# 17253
[Author unidentified]
[POLYNESIA] Original letter containing vivid descriptions of Tahiti and Rarotonga. August, 1934.
Typed letter, [7] pages, on onion-skin paper, 280 x 215 mm, headed ‘At Sea, about 500 miles from N.Z. Sunday, August 19th, 1934’; with pencil map of the ship’s journey through the islands of Tahiti and three lines of handwritten text; addressed to ‘Dear Pauline’ (internal references indicate she was a close personal friend of the …