Latest News Articles by Ian McKay
Vatican buildings book sells in Rome
12 March 2018One highlight of a February 20 sale held in Italy was the handsome, armorially bound 1694 first edition of the Swiss born architect Carlo Fontana’s Templum Vaticanum.
Prices show the US comic effect
12 March 2018Selling at $400,000 (£285,715), the original cover artwork for the 100th issue of Amazing Spider-Man comic led a recent three-day American comic and comic artwork auction that raised a total of around $7.2m (£5.14m).
From the ‘rock star’ of physics
12 March 2018‘Rock Star’ of physics and Nobel Prize winner, Richard Feynman, habitually refused to sign copies of his books, telling his editor: “I’m not going to go on TV and I’m not going to sign any books!”
Scottish sale travels far and wide in scope
05 March 2018An album of Indian photographs sold for £32,000 in Edinburgh provided ATG’s Pick of the Week in the previous issue (No 2331), but there was much more on offer in that 550-lot Scottish sale.
The first Steadman slice of fear and loathing in 1971
05 March 2018Sold for $28,000 (£20,820) by Christie’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on December 5 was this original drawing by Ralph Steadman for the 1971 first appearance of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Scrapbook conjures Austen atmosphere
05 March 2018Running to some 300pp and described by the auctioneers as “a most enchanting album, redolent of Jane Austen and her world”, a scrapbook compilation of paper cut-outs, views and figural studies, sold for £1550 in a general sale held in Sussex.
Parisian Book of Hours with Russian princess link
05 March 2018A Parisian Book of Hours dating to c.1440-50 was among illuminated or decorated manuscripts sold during in the closing weeks of 2017.
In search of Franklin relics
26 February 2018The many voyages made in search of the lost Franklin expedition feature strongly in another spotlight on polar exploration covering sales in London and New York. The splendid Martin Greene library again provides notable highlights.
Go wild in the Antarctic
26 February 2018Under the overall command of James Clark Ross, one of the earlier major expeditions to the Antarctic regions focused principally on magnetic and geographical investigations – but others aboard had different priorities.
Early tee time: golf rules from 1839
26 February 2018Sold at £6000 in a recent Scottish sale was an early golfing item. The 1839 edition of Rules of the Game of Golf adopted by the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers shown below was still in the original wrappers and bore an 1852 ownership inscription of one Henry Wells.
Top picks from Pasadena auction
26 February 2018Printed in Mexico in 1787, but promoted as the first book in English printed west of the Mississippi, a slim work of just 14 leaves in contemporary paper wrappers called A Short Abridgment to Christian Doctrine was one of the rarer items offered in a recent California sale.
Greene shoots of exploration
19 February 2018Further discoveries from recent New York and London auctions including polar rarities.
Another Snark is hunted down at Newcastle sale
19 February 2018In 1876 Lewis Carroll had 140 copies of 'The Hunting of the Snark. An Agony in 8 Fits' specially bound in gilt decorated cloth for presentation and just a few weeks ago ATG noted the sale at £3600 by Dominic Winter of one of the 20 blue and gold versions.
Mystery lot which was just the job at auction
19 February 2018A very modestly estimated job lot of 25 or so books offered in a recent West Country auction went on to sell for £6500 – but what got some bidders excited?
Tolkien provides signature on a slip
12 February 2018First-edition sets with well-preserved jackets and perhaps a signature or an inscription usually make the really big money where Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is concerned, but a recent Dublin sale produced something rather unusual.
There’s gold in them thar hills…
12 February 2018Published jointly by Kellogg & Comstock of New York and D Needham of Buffalo, c.1849-50, the rare and amusing hand coloured lithograph shown below is titled The Independent Gold Hunter on His Way to California: I Neither Borrow nor Lend.
Elgar is no enigma at auction
12 February 2018Music played its part in the first Dominic Winter sale of the year, with books, scores and other autograph material from another but differently sourced Elgar collection to others offered before by the saleroom.
Of Mice and Men and Biggles
12 February 2018Michael Rothenstein’s illustration of Lennie Small and George Millon, the Californian migrant workers whose story is told in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, formed both the jacket illustration and the frontispiece (shown below) to the 1927, first UK edition.
History reveals ghostly truth
12 February 2018It is a year now since Jim Spencer joined Derbyshire saleroom Hansons (20% buyer’s premium), tasked with building up the book sections of their sales.
Forum is venue for wide variety
05 February 2018Roman and 20th century poetry, science and sarcasm, Arctic printing, Mayan discoveries, cranes and a porcupine, as well as a miniature master of calligraphy all featured in one of the first large London book sales of the year.