Books & Periodicals
Material in this specialist market ranges from the early printed works of the Gutenberg Press and William Caxton right through to Modern First Editions and now up to signed copies of Harry Potter. Condition and rarity are the keys to this sector.
Rashi’s commentaries – the pristine version?
14 August 2001Written in northern France around 1200, apparently by a scribe called Jacob, this vellum manuscript of Solomon ben Isaac Rashi’s Commentary on the Prophets (II Samuel 22:1 to Zechariah 6:13) is incomplete, but Rashi (1040-1105) was responsible for the most important and influential Hebrew biblical commentary of the Middle Ages and this is one of the two or three oldest extant manuscripts of Rashi’s commentaries on the Prophets.
The Eumaeus episode, an early draft from Joyce’s Ulysses manuscript
27 July 2001A previously unknown and early draft of one of the key closing chapters of James Joyce’s Ulysses, the Eumaeus episode, was offered at Sotheby’s on July 10, and it was one of two committed private buyers who took the lot to £780,000, just short of the low estimate.
P is for the Potters – Beatrix and Harry
27 July 2001THERE WAS no competing with Harry Potter in the Sotheby’s sale of July 10, and bidding rose to £75,000 for Thomas Taylor’s original illustration for the the book that launched those wizard tales in 1997, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, but Beatrix Potter did her bit too, as did Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, W. Heath Robinson, E.H. Shepard, Lawson Wood, Ronald Searle, Dr Seuss and others.
The Hours of Albrecht of Brandenburg number £2.7million
19 July 2001UK: This article looks at a magnificent Book of Hours illustrated for one of the wealthiest prelates and patrons of the arts in 16th century Europe, Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg.
Trench and his Embankment – a panoramic first proposal
19 July 2001A BIBLE was one of several lots that moved into the four-figure range in this summer sale at Y Gelli in Hay on June 8.
A recently rediscovered manuscript of William Gilpin’s book on Forest Scenery...
09 July 2001UK: Sold for £48,000 to Quaritch at Christie’s on June 4& 6 was a recently rediscovered manuscript of William Gilpin’s book on Forest Scenery... (first published in 1791) that fills four volumes and contains 25 full and 20 half-page watercolour drawings by Gilpin, plus three pencil and wash drawings of animals by his brother Sawrey.
Selection of Hexandrian Plants
09 July 2001An incomplete copy of one of the masterpieces of English botanical illustration of the 19th century, Mrs Edward Berry’s Selection of Hexandrian Plants (1831-34), offered at Christie’s on June 4 & 6 contained only 45 (of 51) of the younger Robert Havell’s partially colour-printed and hand-finished engraved and aquatinted plates, but it brought a bid of £60,000 from the Oppenheimer Gallery.
A medieval lawyer’s pocketbook and Quevedo’s Seneca
28 June 2001UK: WRITTEN shortly after 1290, perhaps for a practising lawyer and presumably by professional scribes – it exhibits a variety of neat English cursive and charter hands – the manuscript copy of Magna Carta and the Statutes of England illustrated right is a remarkable example of an English medieval secular book.
A leaf from the Gutenberg Bible and other treasures
28 June 2001A single leaf from a 1455 Gutenberg Bible, in a copy of Alfred E. Newton’s A Noble Fragment of 1921 sold at Bloomsbury Book Auctions on June 8 for £15,000 (+ 15 per cent buyer's premium).
Summer saleroom selection
21 June 2001Pictured here is a selection of books sold in auctions in London and New York.
Standard text on Greece was a later starter
21 June 2001UK: ONE OR TWO lots that figured among the higher prices in this Midlands sale would seem to have been sold primarily as collections of travel or botanical plates, and these I have bypassed in favour of the following selection of books.
More Zainer Incunabula
29 May 2001USA: INCUNABULA offered as part of the April 26 sale of Early Printed Books at Swanns were not in the Friedlaender class, but the top lots did include two books from the press of Gunther Zainer, Augsburg’s first printer.
“My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guide me…”
29 May 2001In the past ten years, there have been only five or six first edition copies of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at auction, and not since 1991 have we seen a copy in the original boards*.
Seven Pillars & Poem
29 May 2001JUST two days after moving operations to new premises at Coleridge House, Shaddongate, Carlisle, the recently retitled firm Thomson Roddick & Medcalf celebrated with a special book sale and took a bid of £17,500 for one of the privately printed subscriber copies of Seven Pillars of Wisdom issued in 1926.
“The only readable portion of the book is the title”
23 April 2001UK: A key feature of the Bloomsbury Book Auctions sale of April 5 was a private collection of the works of A.A. Milne.
Christmas 1666: the Plague Toll
17 April 2001UK: One of the least prepossessing lots, but obviously rare and among the more sought after of the day’s offerings, was a small handbill recording the plague tally and burial record for the Cambridge colleges from Christmas Day 1666 to New Year’s Day 1667.
£22,000 for John Gielgud’s Hamlet – the Olivier bequest
17 April 2001In a Bloomsbury Book Auctions sale reported earlier (Antiques Trade Gazette No. 1485, April 21, 2001) I mentioned a bid of £2800 on a 1930 (German text) Cranach Press edition of Hamlet, but at Sotheby’s on April 5, as part of the John Gielgud Collection, a copy of the English text version made very much more than that.
Some Account of Channel Islands…
17 April 2001UK: A CHANNEL Islands collection formed by Sir Martin Le Quesne occupied the first 108 lots of the catalogue issued by Bloomsbury Book Auctions for their March 15 sale.
The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia – the first public reading
09 April 2001UK: OFFERED at Phillips on March 30 was the former Houghton copy of the 1590 first edition of The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia.
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