About Us

Elizabeth’s Bookshops: Book dealers since 1973

Elizabeth’s Bookshops are one of Australia’s largest second-hand bookshop operations, with 4 stores on both sides of the Australian continent. Established in 1973, Elizabeth’s Bookshops are now in Perth and Fremantle (WA) and Newtown (NSW).

History: Way back in 1973, the first Elizabeth’s Bookshop was in Broadway Fair, Nedlands WA (next to the University of Western Australia). Since then, there have been WA branches in Subiaco, Cottesloe and in various locations in Perth and Fremantle. In Sydney, we had a branch in Oxford Street (Darlinghurst), in Pitt Street (Sydney CBD) and in another location in Newtown.

Yes, there is a real Elizabeth!

Elizabeth has been the Founding Partner (now retired from active duty) of Elizabeth’s Bookshops since its establishment in 1973.

Our current stock is in excess of 400,000 books.

Much of our stock is sourced locally, from customers bringing in their books to the Fremantle Warehouse and the King Street, Newtown shop.

We also scour the world for you on overseas buying expeditions. (Yes – Economy Class, next to the toilet J)

In the UK, we have a network of small second-hand and specialist antiquarian bookshops (stretching from Brighton to Yorkshire to Wales) from whom we buy.

It is a very broad range: We buy expensive traditional Victorian Family Bibles (brass clasps and all the fruit) from the bloke that binds books for the British Library and second-hand Penguins from market-traders in Norfolk and Sussex.

In the USA, we visit enormous dusty warehouses of publisher’s left-overs to buy piles of art and philosophy and whatever looks funky, obscure, esoteric and interesting.

Our website only lists a few thousand of the hundreds of thousands of titles we have in stock… We are essentially “bricks-and-mortar” bookshops, but quite a few of the “gems” are on this website. (You can examine all of the listed items at our Fremantle Warehouse!)

We only list less than 1% of our current stock on the website. (In a very busy second-hand bookshop, it is basically impractical to list books that might come into stock in the morning and be sold by lunchtime.) Yes, we probably will have a vintage Agatha Christie title or the latest John le Carre in stock, but they move too quickly to list and then de-list them.

We are very glad that you are visiting our website and hope you find something… But we would really also like to meet you in person in Elizabeth’s Bookshops!