Latest News Articles by Ian McKay
British and Irish book auctions: May 15-25, 2018
14 May 2018ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from May 15-25, 2018.
Bird books flock to auctions
14 May 2018The coming weeks will offer some special, if sometimes very costly, opportunities for bird lovers.
Darwin letters to Bonn botanist sell in Cologne
14 May 2018Bid to €60,000 (£53,100) in a March 16 sale held by Venator & Hanstein (23% buyer’s premium) was a group of letters sent by Charles Darwin in the 1860s and ‘70s to a German botanist, Friedrich Hildebrand.
British and Irish book auctions: May 8-18, 2018
07 May 2018ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from May 8-18, 2018.
Beautiful bindings at South Cerney auction
30 April 2018A volume containing Richard Hooker’s sixth and eighth books dealing with The Lawes of Ecclesiastical Policy… is a 1651 re-issue of an edition first published three years earlier. The principal attraction, however, was the armorial binding.
First golf book tees off in the US
30 April 2018Published in 1895, Wright & Dixon’s Guide to American Golf… was one of the very first books on the game to appear in that country. A copy sold on April 12 in San Francisco for $42,500 (£29,930) was billed as “perhaps the only copy extant”.
Russian album is crowning glory at US auction
30 April 2018Printed for circulation only among members of the imperial family and those foreign dignitaries who had participated in the celebrations, an album recording the 1883 coronation in Moscow of Tsar Alexander III and the Empress Marie Feodorovna sold for $30,000 (£21,125) in a US sale.
Complete 17th century work is a great rarity of Judaica
30 April 2018Bound in recent times as six volumes in elaborately gilt crushed scarlet morocco, a 1614-17 Prague first of a major commentary on the Mishnah by Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1579-1654), was a highlight of a recent New York sale of Judaica.
British and Irish book auctions: May 1-12, 2018
30 April 2018ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from May 1-12, 2018.
Celestial work lights up Glos sale
30 April 2018First such pocket atlas published in England leads a look at highly diverse auction selection
Word on the street is of a Ravilious ‘record’
23 April 2018Brought into a free valuation day held at Bishop’s Cleve, near Cheltenham, a copy of Eric Ravilious’ High Street sold on March 27 at what would appear to be a record sum in a Derbyshire sale.
British birds and natural history fly high in New York
23 April 2018Sold for $300,000 (£214,185) apiece in a recent New York sale were three very well-known works from the worlds of cartography and natural history.
British and Irish book auctions: April 25 to May 5, 2018
23 April 2018ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from April 25 to May 5, 2018.
From Dickens to a dodgy bishop
23 April 2018Running to 600 lots and achieving £560,000 hammer, a recent London sale incorporated a wide range of collecting fields, from Dickensian theatrical ephemera to children’s books and all things Irish.
Journals detail journeys all over
16 April 2018Collection of more than 100 travel accounts is one highlight of a varied London auction.
A passage to Serindia
16 April 2018An estimate of £120-150 was never going to do for a lot in a Leominster sale of March 28 that was catalogued, in full, as “STEIN, Sir Aurel, Serindia, a Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asia and Westernmost, four vols, and a box with maps (5)”.
Sailing off to Iceland
16 April 2018Something of a rarity, To Iceland in a Yacht appears to have no other auction appearances to its name. It was privately printed in Edinburgh in 1873 for its author, the chemist Robert Angus Smith (1817-84), a man best known for his work on air pollution and his identification of what later came to be known as acid rain.
Music marks abolitionist’s return from exile
16 April 2018Composed to mark the departure from these shores after two years of self-imposed exile in Ireland and England, a Farewell Song of Frederick Douglass, on Quitting England for America – the Land of his Birth was published in London in 1847.
Lady, can you spare a dime?
16 April 2018Rather slimmer than he is seen in the later films that are perhaps his principal memorial, this ink self-portrait by the comedian, juggler and actor WC Fields dates from his earlier, vaudeville years.
Stormy story of Plath and Hughes
09 April 2018A remarkable Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes collection which was consigned to auction by their daughter, Frieda Hughes, ran to some 100 lots and formed a separately catalogued part of a recent Knightsbridge sale.