Though part of the upper wrapper remained, the copy offered in Carlisle was effectively disbound, but it sold at £170.
Other items of particular local interest included, at £125, Water Power Mills of South Westmorland, published in Kendal in 1930. This too was by a Mr Somervell – John in this case.
Sold at £370 was a job lot of three books about local clockmakers. Hughes’ Notes on Some Westmorland Clockmakers Pt.II (1937) and Loomes’ Westmorland Clocks and Clockmakers of 1974 were two of them, but I am told that it was a second edition of J.B. Penfold’s Clockmakers of Cumberland that was the major attraction. Published as recently as 1977, it is already very hard to find.
The Yangtse Sights by Yamane Takuzo, an oblong folio collection described as containing “very many plates after photographs”, was published in Tokyo in 1916 with text in English and Japanese. In silk covered boards, it made £180.
Thomson Roddick & Medcalf, Carlisle, October 31, Buyer’s premium:12.5 per cent
Ruskin adds his name to those protesting the arrival of railways
Robert Somervell’s A Protest against the Extension of Railways in the Lake District, published in Windermere in 1876, contains “articles thereon reprinted from the Saturday Review etc.”, and a nine page preface by one of those who objected to the intrusion of the railways into the Lake District – John Ruskin.
