Books & Periodicals

A Colin Dexter first brought one of the higher bids at Keys (20% buyer’s premium) of Aylsham in its June 13-14 sale.

An 1841 guide to London’s ladies of the night sold by Hansons for £3300 featured recently in ATG (No 2390), and one of the many rarities that emerged from the recent Gloucestershire sale of the late Martin Orsky’s library was a group of four 18th century broadsides advertising prostitutes.

Our listing of British and Irish book auctions taking place from July 16-27, 2019.

Vivid and lifelike, the lithograph of an Ariel Toucan shown below first appeared in a monograph by British naturalist John Gould (1804-81), 'The Bird Man'. Despite being in the hand of his wife Elizabeth (1804-41), this, like most of the illustrations in John’s publications, was long considered to be essentially his work.

Stand-out lot in a recent Irish sale was one of the 100 special copies of Ulysses printed on Dutch handmade paper by Van Gelder that James Joyce signed on publication in Paris in 1922.

For three years now Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) has, in addition to its high-profile auctions, been holding fortnightly, online-only timed sales that in their diverse content, it feels, act as a useful bellwether for the book world at large.

A rare copy of the earliest-known depiction of a book auction emerged for sale in Gloucestershire at the end of last month.

Two recent auctions offered a number of 18th and 19th century English novels by authors unfamiliar to many readers but who are nevertheless in demand through their rare surviving works.

Works produced in the 1940s by Al Hirschfeld figured prominently among the higher priced lots at a June 4 Illustration Art sale held in New York.

A complete set of the Metellus 'Speculum orbis terrae' publications that featured in ATG No 2399 was not the only lot to record a six-figure result in the June 5, King Street sale of the Mopelia collection of atlases and travel books.

Disbound, but complete and still in the original covers, an 1830 first of William North’s Correct Account of all the Cricket Matches Played by the Nottingham Old Cricket Club from 1771 to 1829 came into bat in a recent Staffordshire sale with an estimate of just £50-100, but went on to score £6400 online via thesaleroom.com.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from July 9-19, 2019.

Two men will appear in court in connection with the 2017 theft of rare books from a west London warehouse.

Published in Venice in November 1494, a copy of Luca Pacioli’s 'Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proporzioni et proporzionalità…' offered in a recent US sale was granted the rare privilege in the book auction world of having a catalogue all of its own.

Beyond the Horizon was the title given to the remarkable Mopelia collection of atlases and travel books offered in a June 5 sale in London.

Running up a total of over €2m on 600 lots, a smaller number than usual, the May 27 sale held by Ketterer Kunst (23/21% buyer’s premium) in Hamburg produced the book department’s best-ever results.

A rare signed ink and gouache image in which Tintin carves a makeshift propellor to replace that damaged by a forced landing of his aeroplane in the Soviet Union sold for $900,000 (£708,660) in a June 8-9 sale of European comic artworks held in the US.

Our listing of British and Irish book auctions taking place from July 2-13.