The earliest of a small group of maritime lots was Captain George Berkeley’s 1756 Naval History of Britain, originally published in 59 weekly parts but here bound in later half morocco. Illustrated with 33 engraved portraits and three maps, it sold at £440 to Maggs.
A job lot of around 155 volumes of The Navy List from the years 1939-72 was valued at just £60-80 but went on to sell for £1200 (Harper). Estimated at £500-600 but sold at £300 (Elton) was a disbound and slightly spotted and soiled copy of A Report relative to the Opening a Communication by a Canal or a Rail or Tram Way from Stockton, by Darlington, to the Collieries. Published in Stockton in 1818 and issued by a committee chaired by Thomas Meynell, the report that was to have such a famous outcome was based on a survey made by George Overton and drawing on the advice of the civil engineer John Rennie.
One of 750 signed copies of the 1913 edition of Houseman’s Princess Badoura... illustrated by Edmund Dulac, a fine copy in the original pictorial cloth, was sold at £700 (Goldstein)
Bloomsbury Book Auctions
London, October 11
Buyer’s premium: 15/10 per cent
Navy Lists and Railway Tracks
THIS WAS a very mixed sale at Bloomsbury Book Auctions on 11 October, containing plenty of job lots and much ex-library material, but little of outstanding interest or high value.
