Letter

A handwritten letter by the 26-year-old Mozart coming up for auction at Christie’s reveals a tricky love life.

Hermann Historica’s (25% buyer’s premium inc VAT) huge series of sales in Munich included what it billed as ‘a key document from German history’.

As timing goes, the sale date for an album of handwritten letters, photographs and ephemera related to Sophia Duleep Singh (1876-1948) could not have been much better.

Charlotte Corday was the woman who assassinated the French Revolutionary journalist and politician Jean-Paul Marat.

The standout signature to an autograph album compiled by a boy scout in 1919 was that of Lawrence of Arabia.

A rare souvenir, an example of correspondence between two key figures in the French Revolution, was one of the highlights of a sale held by Osenat (25% buyer’s premium) in Versailles on March 12.

Sotheby’s Coronation Sale ending on May 4 is a cross-category collection of manuscripts, jewellery, artwork and objects relating to the British monarchy

A collection of 32 letters and cards written by Diana, Princess of Wales to two friends came for sale at Lay’s (18% buyer’s premium).

Letter sent from a very young Charles to his grandma with doodles and kisses emerges at auction

Shrewsbury sale offered rare opportunity to bid for a letters by the great writer and lexicographer

Extraordinary letter by Nobel Prize-winning biophysicist both commends and condemns a colleague

A group of five autograph letters sent by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones to a Miss Megan Jones in the years 1965-66 brought a bid of £4500.

A cache of material from descendants of the Starbuck family, a Quaker whaling family influential in both the abolitionist movement and the founding of Nantucket as a whaling centre, was the highlight of Catherine Southon’s sale on February 8.

This single-page letter offered on January 19 by Mellors & Kirk (24% buyer’s premium) tells the remarkable story of Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori (1762-1829).

The visit of ‘Revolutionary Wars’ hero Gilbert du Motler, the Marquis of Lafayette, to the US in 1824 spawned a large number of commemoratives.

Thought by the auction house to be an early copy, a letter that details the horrors of the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ in 1756 was sold for £2900.

“We have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen.”