Books & Periodicals

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.

Copy of ‘most influential work in the history of microscopy’ surfaces in Chicago saleroom.

Single page was used as a promotion for this classic Conan Doyle work.

Successful £15.3m campaign secures British literature treasures including Brontë family manuscripts.

A single-page letter sent on the day before Steve Jobs’ 19th birthday to a close school friend, Tim Brown, sold for $400,000 (£292,825) in New York.

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.

Modestly estimated at $3000-5000, a richly illustrated manuscript that presents in two finely bound folio volumes a pictorial record of the ‘Costumes et Plantes de L’Hindoustan’ made $80,000 (£58,395) in a New York auction.

A Christie’s New York (25/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) online timed sale achieved six-figure bids for no fewer than eight lots and very high prices for a great many others while running up an impressive and premium-inclusive total of close on $4.75m (£3.45m).

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

A live online October 28 sale held by Forum (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) attracted a much higher than expected bid for this small and rather browned poster promising that, for one day only, visitors to The ‘Stockton House’ could view not only the preserved head of the renowned bandit Joaquin, but ‘the hand of Three Fingered Jack!’

Edition of Shakespeare’s works from 1663 heads varied selection in Cambridge.

A single-lot sale on October 19 offered an illuminated Ashkenazic prayer book that realised a premium-inclusive $8,307,000 (£6,019,565).

A third selection of 16th and 17th century English books from Fox Pointe Manor was offered by Forum (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on October 21.

One of York’s oldest bookshops is closing next year.

One of around 30 known medieval English folding almanacs, and one of only a few in private hands, sold for £95,000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium) at Tennants.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Gary Munson collection delivers a string of rarities sold for record-breaking sums

The World Chess Championship currently taking place in Dubai began on November 26 in familiar style.

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