Manuscript

The book of hours known as The Rothschild Prayerbook sold for $12m (£7.55m) at Christie’s in New York.

Cheshire auctioneers Adam Partridge set a house record when this newly discovered copy of the Passover Haggadah written and illuminated by the celebrated 18th century scribe Aaron Wolf Herlingen sold for £210,000.

Little did “the Reverend Dr Walter Blandford Warden of Wadham Colledge” of Oxford University realise that one day his name would have such significance in the world of newspapers.

Cheshire auctioneers Adam Partridge have discovered a copy of the Passover Haggadah written and illuminated by the celebrated 18th century scribe Aaron Wolf Herlingen in Vienna.

The University of London is reported to have cancelled plans to auction off a rare set of four early Shakespeare folios to raise funds for further acquisitions.

Billed as “the most important early printed book to be offered this century”, a deluxe vellum copy of the ‘Opera’ of Virgil is being offered at Christie’s on June 12.

The Mishneh Torah was withdrawn from a recent Sotheby’s sale at the eleventh hour after vendors Michael and Judy Steinhard struck a private treaty sale with The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

For those with Cornish ancestors or a general interest in the area’s history, David Lay’s sale of Part I of the Pendarve archive on March 26 in Penzance may well be of interest.

An important private collection of Beatrix Potter books, manuscripts, artwork, photographs, figurines and collectables is being offered for sale at Bloomsbury Auctions on February 27.

The handwritten draft of one of John Betjeman’s best-known poems, ‘The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel’, is just one of the gems in the next tranche of the Roy Davids Collection to appear at Bonhams Bond Street.

A group of hitherto unknown 19th century documents has come to light revealing illegal trafficking of Chinese people to Latin America where they were forced into slavery.

Printed in German, this Judaica booklet relates to the siege of Prague by the Prussians led by Frederick the Great in 1757.

Later this year, Sotheby’s will be offering three valuable works of art from the Devonshire collection at Chatsworth House including one of the best Raphael drawings remaining in private hands.

What has been a rich summer season of American book and manuscript sales culminated when Christie’s New York saw a record for any American book or historical document.

THE man who oversaw the French Revolution's 'reign of terror' but who finally met his end at the guillotine himself, Maximilien de Robespierre, was back on the block again at the end of last month as Sotheby's auctioned an extraordinary cache of documents in Paris.

A UNIQUE archive of original Enid Blyton material is being offered for sale by her elder daughter's estate at Ilkley auctioneers Hartley's on September 15.

“ED seriously injured late today when train hit car – Ritch”. When a shocked John Steinbeck received this telegram in May, 1948, he left immediately for Monterey, California, but by the time he got there his good friend Ed Ricketts, the man he later described as being “part of my brain for 18 years”, was dead.

WITH the retreat from Dunkirk so much in the news at the moment, Aguttes have a particularly topical offering in their June 18 sale of manuscripts, postcards and historical documents.

A VERY Italian tale involving an important collection of papers that once belonged to the ‘father of art history’, Giorgio Vasari, took a new twist last month when a court injunction halted its sale by auction at the eleventh hour.

AS millions of Americans celebrated the victory of Barack Obama, Christie's announced that they will be offering an important memento from another historic Presidential election which brought a sense of hope to the country.