Books & Periodicals

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

Comics played a significant part in a recent held by Mitchells (20% buyer’s premium) of Cockermouth, undoubtedly helped by the presence of some 30,000 Marvel comics from one private collection.

Modestly estimated at just £100-150 in a recent Carlisle sale, an 18th century manuscript notebook offering ‘An Account of the Improvements in the Gardens & Park at Cannonhall’ proved a major attraction.

Two broadsides describing and illustrating with wood engravings the executions of convicted murderers were sold online at £1600 apiece by Forum.

Featuring one historiated initial depicting a priest blessing the marriage of a couple who stand before him, a medieval guide to marital problems and resolutions made £32,000 online at Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

Two institutions dominated bidding for the notebooks and correspondence of a significant Regency period female author at the Cotswold Auction Company in Cheltenham last week.

Publisher tried to link book to the poet to boost sales but a revised version was issued instead

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

Sold for £4600 in a February 6 sale held in the Chichester salerooms of Stride & Son (18% buyer’s premium) was an album of cut-paper work produced by Elizabeth Cobbold c.1810-20.

Star turn among some 120 lots of playing cards offered as part of a Stroud Auctions (18% buyer’s premium) sale was the last to be offered. A complete set of Charles Hodges’ Astronomical Playing Cards, it sold online for £3000.

A remarkable collection of books from The Birmingham Assay Office Library will be offered at Forum Auctions in London on March 26.

Two very different lots helped Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) to boost its first major sale of the year.

The complete original artworks for two of Edward Ardizzone’s much-loved children’s books were sold for £30,000 apiece at Bonhams (27.5/25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium).

As ever, the most recent sale held by Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) contained a great many maps and atlases and shown below is one of the highlights.

Our regular listing of books and works on paper auctions the UK and Ireland.

Accounts of youthful travels in Britain and on a Grand Tour contain often blunt assessments

Rare book dealer Dr Jörn Günther of Switzerland specialises in manuscripts, miniatures, and rare early printed books from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

In ATG No 2427 we noted the sale at Sotheby’s on December 10, at a very much higher than expected £50,000, of a rare copy of the 1553 translation into ‘Scots English’ of Virgil’s Aeneid by Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld.

Extraordinarily high prices paid for the works of the Russian writer Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev were noted in ATG No 2425, and there were many more lots of interest in the sale held by Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) in which they were offered.