Books & Periodicals

A single-owner collection focusing on the polar regions was a notable feature of the travel section of the October 4 sale held by Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium). It included, at a 10-times estimate £3000, the posthumously published Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph Rene Bellot.

Pictures, prints and taxidermic displays accounted for the larger part of the Ornithology Sale held by Keys (17.5% buyer’s premium) on September 22, but it also offered some 175 book lots, many of them multiples.

Sold for £1100 by Chiswick Auctions (23% buyer’s premium) on September 27 was a copy of the posthumously published, 1633 first of Henry Briggs’ Trigonometria britannica….

An example of the extremely rare, “surreptitious” edition of John Flamsteed’s Historia Coelestis… – a star atlas that is one of the great rarities in its field – made a record £43,000 at Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on September 27.

Children’s books sold at Forum included a couple of appealing Beatrix Potter items that were first owned by Francis William Clark, who was just two when he was sent a 1912 first of The Tale of Mr Tod.

At the Ink Fair London on October 25-27, Susanne Sculz-Falster Rare Books offers this collection of 241 butterfly and moth prints housed in a 22-drawer collector’s cabinet, right, for £7500.

“My lord, because I know that you will take pleasure in the great victory which our Lord has granted me on this voyage, I write you this letter, by which you will learn how… I crossed to the Indies, where I found many islands populated with innumerable inhabitants; and I have taken possession of all of them…”

Ed Lake works at Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers, specialist in 18th and 19th century English literature and history. His parents opened the business in 1969 and it is based in Great Russell Street, across from the British Museum. The shop’s ground floor has been renovated to recreate a 19th-century bookshop.

When the French literature section of the great Bradley Martin library was sold in 1989 (at Sotheby’s Monaco), an 1845 first of 'La Reine Margot' by Alexandre Dumas père was offered as part of a job lot of three of his works that sold for FFr11,500 (£1100).

The first book sale of the new season at Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) dispersed the travel library of John and Suzanne Bonham, well-known specialist dealers in the British and international antiquarian book trade.

Bibliomania has been running for three years at the Espace Champerret in the 17th arrondissement in Paris. The biannual fair draws around 100 exhibiting dealers from across Europe (including Pablo Butcher from Oxford).

A single-owner collection relating to the English Civil War featured among the 740 lots that made up a September 6 sale held by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

A ‘Glory of Science’ sale held by Bloomsbury Auctions (24/18/12% buyer’s premium) on September 14 included books, prints, photographs, letters, etc, and was one in which astronomy and space travel played a significant part where higher bids were concerned.

An exceptionally rare bird’s eye view of Chicago before the devastating fire of 1871 that destroyed so much of the old city was sold for $160,000 (£118,520) by local saleroom Leslie Hindman (20/20/12% buyer’s premium) on September 15.

Mostly sold by Woolworth’s stores at 3d each, Mighty Midgets ‘Blitz’ books helped distract children who had to spend nights in air-raid shelters or Underground stations during the Second World War.

Harry Potter’s 20th birthday celebrations continue apace – with a new record for a standard copy of 'The Philosopher’s Stone'.

One of Jules Verne’s most popular tales, 'Around the World in Eighty Days', led the book section of a September 6 sale held by Catherine Southon (18% buyer’s premium).

Works of Cornish interest featured prominently in a sale held by David Lay (18% buyer’s premium) of Penzance, among them those from the library of the writer and scholar, PAS Pool.