Books & Periodicals

Presentation copies of The Bostonians and a volume containing the first bookform appearance of The Turn of the Screw were among the highlights of a large Henry James collection offered in almost 50 lots as part of a Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium) sale.

Possibly the first autograph manuscript of a complete work by Bela Bartok ever seen at auction, a working manuscript for the complete score of the original version of his Second Rhapsody for Violin and Piano (BB96) was bid to £250,000 in a music sale held by Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium).

A fine Pushkin collection, running to a dozen lots in all, was a major attraction in the Russian section of at a Christie’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale.

Illustrated here are two of the 20 hand-coloured litho plates, many showing the Crystal Palace in the background and each with a rhyming couplet below, that make up Blondin’s Marvellous Feats.

Two letters sent by passengers who lost their lives when the Titanic sank in 1912 came to auction in the latter part of 2017: one of them posted before she sailed, the other recovered, along with the owner’s pocket book, when his body was pulled from the freezing Atlantic waters.

Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the Holy Places…, an elephant folio work of 1865 that sold for a treble-estimate £45,000 at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium) on November 14, was a rare and complete proof copy of a monumental book of Palestinian views recognised as one of the scarcer colour-plate books on the Middle East.

A remarkable group of 14 works by HG Wells – every one of them sporting a dust jacket – sold at strong and very often record sums in the book section of a December 15 sale held by Cuttlestones (17.5% buyer’s premium).

Complete with slightly frayed and browned but rarely seen jacket, a 1933 copy of George Orwell’s 'Down and Out in Paris and London' was bid to £46,000 by James Hall of Lucius Books in York at a Dominic Winter sale.

While the end of last year was chock-full of auctions, this winter has been even busier.

The Marquis de Sade’s manuscript, '120 Days of Sodom', and André Breton’s 'Surrealist Manifestos' have been declared national treasures by the French government and were withdrawn from a planned auction.

The night, just three months before her death, that Marilyn Monroe sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in sultry tones at a Democratic Party fundraiser celebrating John F Kennedy’s 45th birthday caused quite a sensation.

A fascinating archive of manuscripts, ephemera and artefacts relating to the life and career of the great actor, playwright and theatrical manager David Garrick sold for a far higher than predicted £90,000 at Bonhams (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on November 15.

‘Stage Coach Passengers passing Woburn Sands’ is one of 100 coloured engraved caricatures after Isaac Cruikshank that illustrate GM Woodward’s Eccentric Excursions or Literary and Pictorial Sketches in England and South Wales, interspersed with Curious Anecdotes of 1807.

A copy of the first published work of the Brontë sisters sold for a record sum at Sotheby’s (25/20/12/5% buyer’s premium) on November 7, just a few months after a new high had been set at another London auction.

Record bids greeted a couple of works by the renowned and influential science-fiction writer Philip K Dick in a November 14 sale held by Swann (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

The theme of death was of particular interest to the Italian industrialist Giancarlo Beltrame (1925-2011).