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.
Catalogue clues to library riches destroyed by fire
28 August 2017A blaze which tore through Norwich Central Library one August morning in 1994 destroyed thousands of historic documents and more than 100,000 books.
Fine bindings from Spain and England
28 August 2017Eight fine bindings are the focus of this report, which draws mainly on sales held in the UK and US in the summer months – but also includes one to come in the new season sales.
Musical marvels impress in Paris
28 August 2017Music, in printed editions rather than autograph scores, played a significant part in raising a premium-inclusive €1.65m (£1.45m) for the third portion of the Pierre Bergé library to come to auction.
Colourful life of Jane Austen
28 August 2017Pictured here is 'Fanny was obliged to introduce him to Mr Crawford’, an ink and watercolour version of an illustration made by Hugh Thomson for an 1897 Macmillan edition of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.
1813 and all tatt
26 August 2017Tattooed from head to foot, this ‘Native of Nukahiva’ (in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia) features on one of the two frontispieces and a folding chart that form the illustrative content of the 1813, first English edition of Adam von Krusenstern’s 1803-06 Voyage round the World…
How fragments sell for fortunes
21 August 2017Over the years, any number of rare and very early manuscript fragments have been recovered from disintegrating old bindings in which they had been used as packing.
Playwright shows cricket skills
21 August 2017Sold for £400 on July 5 by Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium), as part of an online sale of cricket books, was one of just 50 specially bound copies of The Catch: A Correspondence by Harold Pinter and Alan Wilkinson.
Get it into perspective
21 August 2017A 1765 first of John L Cowley’s The theory of perspective demonstrated… sold for £17,000 by Christie’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 12 appears to be the only first edition recorded at auction.
Royal tearaway's tale revealed by auction link to London's past and ‘Antiquity Smith’
18 August 2017John Thomas Smith, reportedly born in a hackney carriage on a June evening in 1766, was an artist, writer and a Londoner.
To whom did Clare Leighton dedicate her 1933 set of wood engravings?
14 August 2017Almost 30 years ago, a proof copy of Clare Leighton’s 'The Farmer’s Year of 1933', effectively a cased set of 12 of her wood engravings, all captioned, signed and inscribed in her hand, sold for £2800 at Sotheby’s.
Tolkien writes early verses to get into the Hobbit
14 August 2017Three of the poems featured in A Northern Venture…, a slim collection of verses by members of the Leeds University English School Association published by the Swan Press in 1923, added considerable value to this now rare little work.
5 Questions - Gonzalo Fernandez Pontes of Pontes Maps
14 August 2017Gonzalo Fernandez Pontes became the president of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), an international body with 1800 affiliates, in 2016. He undertakes his duties alongside running his shop, Pontes Maps, which opened in Madrid in 1991.
Cornucopia of works on paper reveals early 20th French gem
14 August 2017Large numbers of lots identified only as folders, boxes and albums full of prints, watercolours, maps and so on offered in a Brightwells (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale of July 5 included one disarmingly catalogued, in full, as ‘Sketches, Watercolours, Prints of Naked Ladies, chiefly’. It sold at £500.
French 18th century magic trick book features 'blow' reading device
14 August 2017‘L’Abbé Quille’ (shown below), against whose leg a dog is seen relieving itself in the illustration, is one of 84 hand-coloured plates – 12 each of seven subjects – that make up a French magic trick book of c.1799 sold for £2900 by Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) in a June 19-20 sale.
The Brontë sisters’ struggle to be printed
07 August 2017Leading a 75-lot Brontë collection sold by Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 10* was a set of two of the novels written by the sisters in the hugely productive years of 1846-47.
5 Questions - Fuchsia Voremberg of Maggs Bros
07 August 2017Fuchsia Voremberg works in the travel department at rare books and manuscripts specialist Maggs Bros in London
Gould’s Birds of Britain flies to £36,000 at Dominic Winter
07 August 2017Handsomely bound, a set of Gould’s Birds of Britain offered as part of the small but select Dorros ornithological library at Christie’s New York sale of June 15 failed against a $60,000-80,000 estimate, but in a Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) sale of the previous day a very differently presented set brought a mid-estimate £36,000.
Cologne edition of the first Bible in Low German makes £195,000 at Christie's
07 August 2017“With the exception of Dürer’s Apocalypse, the most influential woodcut programme from Germany was that of the Cologne Bible of 1478-79.”
Thomas Fale’s work on the art of dialling sell at Bonhams for £5000
07 August 2017Bid to £5000 at Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 14 was a 1593 first of Thomas Fale’s 'Horolographia. The Art of Dialling'.
Karl Marx makes auction mark
05 August 2017Sold for €62,500 (£54,825) by German auction house Kiefer (20% buyer’s premium) in a June 30-July 1 sale in Pforzheim was an 1867, Hamburg first edition of the first volume of Karl Marx’s 'Das Kapital'.
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