Books & Periodicals

One 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.

‘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!”

The script for the very first Doctor Who episode owned by the first actor to play the role is coming up at auction in the West Midlands.

An 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.

Sold 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.

Running 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.

A Parisian Book of Hours dating to c.1440-50 was among illuminated or decorated manuscripts sold during in the closing weeks of 2017.

The 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.

Under 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.

Sold 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.

Printed 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.

A fascinating archive of designs for Brunel’s Thames Tunnel sold at Bonhams was bought by a museum dedicated to the pioneering structure to form the centrepiece of a £4.5m expansion, it has been revealed.

Australian bookseller Sally Burdon has been elected president of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB). She succeeds Gonzalo F Pontes who was president from 2016-18.

Further discoveries from recent New York and London auctions including polar rarities.