Book

When Ian Fleming sent an initial typescript of his first James Bond book Casino Royale to his good friend Paul Gallico asking if it was publishable, he got the reply “the book is a knockout!”.

The collection of the late Americana book dealer William Reese (1955-2018) is coming to Christie’s from May this year.

Bidding on an exceptionally fine, virtually mint first edition of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone offered in the special Firsts into Film section of a December 9-10 sale opened at $75,000.

In the early 1880s Alfred Barnard, secretary of Harper’s Weekly Gazette (the magazine that morphed into today’s Harpers Wine & Spirit), decided to visit all distilleries in Scotland, England and Ireland.

The undoubted star of the November 24 sale at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) was the early 15th century folding almanac, or girdle book, that took £95,000.

A copy of Richard Hakluyt’s 'The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation' takes a six-figure sum at Devon sale.

Single-owner collections offer magical selections days apart in two salerooms

Painted with an image of an urn to the front cover of its vellucent binding and with a view of Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire to the rear, the Book of Common Prayer & Book of Psalmes shown below was printed in 1774 by T Wright & W Gill for the University of Oxford.

Two very different lots shared the highest bid honours in a September 30 sale held in Norfolk. A manuscript recipe book dating from the late 17th/early 18th century onwards was, as such, accomplished in several different hands.

An exceptional, expanded and specially cased example of Ippolito Rosellini’s 'I Monumenti dell Egitto e della Nubia' of 1832-34 topped the bidding in a Fonsie Mealy (20% buyer’s premium) sale of the library from Howth Castle.

Relating to perhaps the most famous of all compositions for the lute, a version of John Dowland’s 'Lachrimae pavane' proved a major attraction in a music sale held by Sotheby’s (26/20/13.9% buyer’s premium).

Copies of the 1900, first edition of Winston Churchill’s novel Savrola have made as much as £3500 at auction.

I understand that the Battersea antiques fair had to be ticketed this time to recoup monies lost to previous cancellations.

A couple of surprise results emerged in a sale held in Armadale, Victoria, by Australian Book Auctions (19.8% buyer’s premium).

Bid to £2400, a signed and inscribed copy of Philip Pullman’s nowadays scarce first novel, The Haunted Storm of 1971, was an unexpectedly successful lot in an online modern literature auction held by Forum (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on August 5.

It was when the book was in the process of being catalogued by Bretells (19% buyer’s premium) of Newport, Shropshire, that a second impression copy of Tolkien’s The Hobbit was seen to bear the author’s signature.

The timed online sale of Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts including Americana that closes at Christie’s New York on October 15 includes books from the estate of Theodore Cohn, a professor of political science.

One of Persian scholar Imam Ghazali’s (1058-1111AD) best-known works, Kimiya-yi Sa’ādat (The Alchemy of Happiness), was compiled late in his lifetime during a period of unrest between Sufi mystics and Islamic scholars – the former accused of overphilosophising Islam and neglecting the importance of ritual practices.

The third edition of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was the last of those published in 1843, coming out (appropriately) on Christmas Eve.