Books & Periodicals

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from December 18-January 17, 2018.

Russian literary firsts and related manuscripts were the focus of one of the many major sales held in the UK, Europe and the US at the year’s end.

Packed with job lots in many categories, the book section of a three-day antiques auction held at Mitchells (20% buyer’s premium) in the Cumbrian market town of Cockermouth heralded an intent to make such sales a regular feature.

Written just a year before his death in 1955, a famous two-page letter in which Albert Einstein put down his thoughts on religion, his Jewish identity and his own search for the meaning of life sold for $2.4m (£1.89m) in a New York auction on December 4.

Literary high spots of a Bonhams (25/10/12% buyer’s premium) sale of November 27 included a three-volume, 1813 first of Jane Austen’s 'Pride and Prejudice'.

Along with Pallas’ 'Flora Russica', the 'Icones Plantarum novarum… floram Rossicam' of the German-Estonian botanist Carl Friedrich von Ledebour is recognised as one of the great works on Russian flora.

Arthur Saul’s Famous Game of Chesse-Play…, the first published book on the game written by an Englishman, came out in 1614.

Dated 1536 and printed in Antwerp, a defective copy of what is known as the ‘mole’ edition of Tyndale’s Newe Testament – so called from the mole (or perhaps hedgehog) depicted on a stone on which St Paul’s foot is resting in one of the many woodcut illustrations – made £30,000 in a recent London sale.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from December 11-20, 2018.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from December 3-15, 2018.

Large-scale 18th century map of the capital joins a wider global outlook at auction...

The three volumes noted here are English language highlights of a separately catalogued, 380-lot, single-owner collection in the October 30-November 1 series of sales held by Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) that was offered under the title Wirtschaft und Staat – or Economy and State.

Titled ‘In the District of Moka’, the hand-coloured litho plate shown here is one of 40 that make up a scarce folio of 1832, Thomas Bradshaw’s Views in Mauritius, or Isle of France…

It has been a busy month for Broadhursts Bookshop owner Laurie Hardman.

Containing near contemporary and even, it would seem, first-hand accounts of the voyages of Columbus and other travellers, a 1512 autograph manuscript of the Dialogo… of Bernardo of Albenga was a star turn in a November 13 sale held by Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium).

A deluxe issue of 'Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens' signed by celebrated illustrator Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) is one of the attractions at The North Wall Arts Centre’s exhibition 'Once Upon a Time'.