Books & Periodicals

Worlds End Bookshop, one of the dealers at the PBFA’s Christmas fair in Bloomsbury on Saturday, December 2, will be featuring a set of first editions by design icon David Hicks.

A brief letter of 1864 in which Ulysses S Grant agrees to General William T Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’, a bold plan to destroy Atlanta, then march across Georgia to Savannah or Charleston during the American Civil War, sold for $100,000 (£75,755) on October 19, at Heritage Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Dallas.

Earlier works in an October 18 sale held by Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) included a scarce 1688 first of Randle Holme’s The Academy of Armory, or a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon, an heraldic work by the third member of a distinguished Chester family of heraldic painters and genealogists to bear that name. It made £1200.

A botanical collection formed over several decades by DF Allen of Washington DC and sold on October 26 by Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) was small in numbers but focused on the exceptional.

Dated by the Edinburgh auctioneers to c.1815-17, a group of watercolours made on a voyage to the Middle and Far East was bid to a far higher than expected £13,000 in a 650-lot Lyon & Turnbull (25/20% buyer’s premium) sale of October 11.

Gilleasbuig Ferguson Rare Books trades from the Isle of Skye and is a member of the ABA, PBFA and ILAB.

Published by Ackermann in 1819 in its ‘Repository of the Arts’ journal, Four & Twenty Hobby-Horses All of a Row is an amusing coloured aquatint, accompanied by verses (by one L Harrison) that begin “Hobby’s the word, and onward sliding, All London Town is set a-riding:”.

The October 17 Swann Galleries (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale focused largely on early printed medical, scientific and travel books but also included, at $24,000 (£18,180), a first edition in Greek of the works of Herodotus.

The Louvre museum in Paris is hoping to raise more than £8m to buy a jewel-encrusted Book of Hours.

Edge Hall, near Malpas in Cheshire, has been a home to members of the Dod family since the reign of Henry II, but the library – sold by Forum Auctions (25/20% buyer’s premium) on October 12 – was formed in the 19th century and is typical of country house libraries.

Golf tournament programmes in Mullock’s (19% buyer’s premium) sale of golf and other sporting memorabilia of October 18-19 included the one shown here, issued for the 1933 Ryder Cup, played on the Southport and Ainsdale courses in 1937.

Science, fantasy and horror was the principal theme of a PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) sale of October 5, though there were also books to appeal to broader literary tastes.

Two sales that dispersed the personal effects of famous film stars, Audrey Hepburn and Vivien Leigh, marked the start of the new London auction season – and scripts, letters and books featured in both.

A good-conduct guide for princes and rulers that focuses on the government of self, the family and the civil authorities proved particularly topical at a New York auction on October 17.

A coalition of auction houses and book dealers has succeeded in rewording a controversial new law governing the sale of autographed collectables in California.