Books & Periodicals

The many voyages made in search of the lost Franklin expedition feature strongly in another spotlight on polar exploration covering sales in London and New York. The splendid Martin Greene library again provides notable highlights.

Under the overall command of James Clark Ross, one of the earlier major expeditions to the Antarctic regions focused principally on magnetic and geographical investigations – but others aboard had different priorities.

Sold at £6000 in a recent Scottish sale was an early golfing item. The 1839 edition of Rules of the Game of Golf adopted by the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers shown below was still in the original wrappers and bore an 1852 ownership inscription of one Henry Wells.

Printed in Mexico in 1787, but promoted as the first book in English printed west of the Mississippi, a slim work of just 14 leaves in contemporary paper wrappers called A Short Abridgment to Christian Doctrine was one of the rarer items offered in a recent California sale.

A fascinating archive of designs for Brunel’s Thames Tunnel sold at Bonhams was bought by a museum dedicated to the pioneering structure to form the centrepiece of a £4.5m expansion, it has been revealed.

Australian bookseller Sally Burdon has been elected president of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB). She succeeds Gonzalo F Pontes who was president from 2016-18.

Further discoveries from recent New York and London auctions including polar rarities.

Children’s author Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) and Indian activist Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) don’t seem to have much in common. At separate auctions held later this month, however, both will have correspondence appearing on the market for the first time.

In 1876 Lewis Carroll had 140 copies of 'The Hunting of the Snark. An Agony in 8 Fits' specially bound in gilt decorated cloth for presentation and just a few weeks ago ATG noted the sale at £3600 by Dominic Winter of one of the 20 blue and gold versions.

A very modestly estimated job lot of 25 or so books offered in a recent West Country auction went on to sell for £6500 – but what got some bidders excited?

Among the lots offered in the March 9 Books and Manuscripts auction at Bonhams New York is an Isaac Newton work now with parallels to the rather more modern Harry Potter books.

Vernacular texts from the Middle Ages might be rarer than their Latin equivalents but their accounts of medieval society and history can offer modern readers a clearer window to the past.

A signed and inscribed first edition of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has hopes of selling for as much as $100,000 in Heritage Auctions’ Rare Book auction on March 7 in New York.

First-edition sets with well-preserved jackets and perhaps a signature or an inscription usually make the really big money where Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is concerned, but a recent Dublin sale produced something rather unusual.

Published jointly by Kellogg & Comstock of New York and D Needham of Buffalo, c.1849-50, the rare and amusing hand coloured lithograph shown below is titled The Independent Gold Hunter on His Way to California: I Neither Borrow nor Lend.

Music played its part in the first Dominic Winter sale of the year, with books, scores and other autograph material from another but differently sourced Elgar collection to others offered before by the saleroom.