Books & Periodicals

“In order to prevent the further slaughter of Dublin citizens, and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers, now surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, the members of the Provisional Governments present at Head Quarters have agreed to an unconditional surrender…”

For a number of years now ship’s logs have made good prices at auction. Those featuring naval engagements, significant encounters in foreign lands, or with added, if amateur illustration – even logs kept on whalers that use simple sketches to record a catch – offer something extra.

Showing some internal staining, browning and other soiling, this 1517 Lyon printing of one of the works of GB Castiglione, a humanist and sometime tutor to the future Elizabeth I, sports a contemporary English binding of blind-stamped calf.

Karl Bodmer, a Swiss artist, was engaged by Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied to provide a pictorial record of his 1833-34 travels among the Indians of the Upper Missouri regions of North America.

Some of the more successful lots in a June 1 sale at PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) of the first portion of the Richard Beagle collection of angling and sporting books were scarce accounts of early hunting trips in the Yukon and Wyoming.

ATG's selection of upcoming sale highlights.

Written in 1960, Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls broke the silence on sex in a socially repressive Ireland, seen through the lives of Kate and Baba, two young Irish country girls yearning for love who move from rural Ireland to Dublin to find it.

The library of William O’Brien, an Irish-born QC and High Court judge in the Victorian era, sold for a premium-inclusive £2.8m at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on June 7.

Featuring more than 70 decorative or historiated initials in full contemporary colour, a fine copy of a Biblia germanica printed by Gunther Zainer of Augsburg in 1475-76 sold for a record €120,000 (£103,450) in a Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) sale.

Cleaned, restored and recently rebound in brown buckskin, together with a 1966 reprint, a rare 1495 Venetian first of Avicenna’s Metaphysica made €26,000 (£22,260) in a Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) sale. The price was slightly under estimate but a record nonetheless.

Written by Judge Advocate David Collins, secretary, close friend and adviser to Governor Arthur Phillip, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales of 1798-1802 was the last of the so-called ‘First Fleet’ journals to be published.

Barbara Chalk runs Rare and Antique Books, an online book dealership, with her husband Robert.

Sensational results for Scottish author in Lyon & Turnbull sale recall a doomed family link...

MADAM – I read, as I always do, Ian McKay’s Books and Works on Paper reports in ATG No 2293.

“A masterpiece of Flemish book illumination,” said Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) of a rare manuscript compendium of texts on chivalry, heraldry, nobility and the rules of war offered in its May 16-18 sales series.

Bid to a double-estimate €42,000 (£36,290) in a Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) sale of May 22 was a very rare, 1566-67 Lisbon first of 'Chronica da felicissimo rei dom Emanuel…'

The three lots briefly described here were not among the very highest priced lots in a Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of May 24 – but all brought record bids.