Latest News Articles by Ian McKay
British and Irish book auctions: September 6-30, 2022
05 September 2022Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.
Book recalls evolution of a natural selection theory
05 September 2022Sold online to a collector in France in a sale held by McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium) of Glasgow was a scarce copy in original boards of 'On Naval Timber and Arboriculture'.
How to illustrate the tale of a tail
05 September 2022Bid to £65,000 in a Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) sale that ran online from July 12-19 was the ink drawing by Ernest Shephard shown below.
Four Quartets and a signature add up to £1750
05 September 2022A small collection of the works of TS Eliot offered in a Canterbury Auction Galleries (22.5% buyer’s premium) sale of August 6-7 included what appears to have been a 1943, first US printing of his 'Four Quartets'.
Nun’s illuminating role in Italy
05 September 2022Sixteenth century manuscript produced in a Florence monastery sells in Essex
Extensive collection of Ford Madox Ford emerges in Cheshire
05 September 2022A substantial collection of works by just one multi-talented and enormously influential figure was presented as part of series of sales held by Adam Partridge (20% buyer’s premium) in its Macclesfield rooms.
Evelyn Waugh’s first book inscribed by man who wooed author’s first wife
29 August 2022Copy of his first book was a later gift from Sir John Heygate to Tarka the Otter author
Fossilised remains unearthed once more in Sussex
29 August 2022A volume containing first editions of two important geological works by Dr Gideon Mantell sold for £2000 in West Sussex.
Sherlock’s brother detected in Arthur Conan Doyle autograph manuscript
29 August 2022Making its third appearance at auction in almost 60 years, the 34pp autograph manuscript of Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter’, a tale from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes collection of his stories that first appeared in The Strand magazine in 1893, has sold for $280,000 (£236,090) in Dallas.
Arthur Rackham rarity bound to please
29 August 2022A 1914 edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland proved one of the principal attractions in a July 26 sale held by Gorringe’s (23% buyer’s premium).
British and Irish book auctions: August 31-September 24, 2022
29 August 2022Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.
Passenger’s unpublished account of pioneering round-the-world trip surfaces in a saleroom
22 August 2022In the years 1881-82, the Rev William Essery was for many months a passenger on the SS Ceylon.
A true Colossus… among Sylvia Plath’s verses
22 August 2022Inscribed to her husband and fellow poet, Ted Hughes, the dedication copy of the first and only collection of Sylvia Plath’s poems to be published in her lifetime, 'The Colossus and other Poems', sold for a record £75,000 in a Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) sale.
Have you got the guts to buy it?
22 August 2022Priced on the cover at nine pence, it was a British copy of a Marvel comic of 1983, one that saw the first appearance of the mighty Thor, that led the bidding at £6300 in the comics section of a July 21-22 sale held by Fieldings (24% buyer’s premium).
‘First editions, second thoughts’ of notable names
22 August 2022The headline borrows the title given to an online Christie’s (26/20% buyer’s premium) sale – one that presented more than 80 modern first editions.
British and Irish book auctions: August 23-September 22, 2022
22 August 2022Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.
British and Irish book auctions, August 16-September 4, 2022
15 August 2022Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.
To TS Eliot from Virginia Woolf
15 August 2022“Dear Tom, I should like to write a story called ‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’ (the title, I suppose, could be changed if necessary). I should certainly expect to let you have it by Oct. 1st.”
Medieval initials add a touch of colour to Bloomsbury sale
15 August 2022The two cut-out and trimmed coloured initials illustrated here are part of a group of six, taken from two manuscripts of 12th century French origin, that made up a lot sold for £10,000 in a July 6 sale held by Bloomsbury Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).
‘Lustie’ farmers sought for a pioneering settlement
15 August 2022Bearing as its title ‘Certain Directions for the Sending of Men and Comodities, & Cattle to Virginia’, a 10pp secretarial manuscript thought to date from c.1609 proved a major attraction in a July 14 sale held by Forum (15/20/12.5% buyer’s premium).