In a fine morocco gilt binding by Bickers & Son, a copy of Beverley R. Morris’ British Game Birds and Wildfowl of 1864 with its 60 coloured plates was sold for £1200 in a Keys sale of July 23. An 1885-87 first edition of Lord Lilford’s Coloured Figures of the Birds of the British Islands, the seven vols. illustrated with 421, mostly chromolitho plates and here bound in modern calf backed boards with “a long relevant Als in pocket at end”, realised £2300.
There were library stamps to many of the numerous black and white plates, but a recently rebound copy of the three-vol. collection of Illustrations of Australian Plants, Collected in 1770 during Captain Cook’s Voyage round the World in HMS Endeavour issued by the British Museum in 1905 brought a bid of £1200 in a Dominic Winter sale of August 25.
Inscribed in 1926, “this gathering of the Roses of many lands grown in an English garden is offered by Ellen Wilmott”, a copy of the author’s The Genus Rosa, published 12 years earlier by Murray, made £1100 (Colin Page) in a Dominic Winter sale of August 25. Here the 25 parts with their complement of 132 chromos and 84 uncoloured plates had been bound as two vols. with the wrappers at the rear. The 46 chromos of a Wright Fruit Grower’s Guide, six vols. 1891-94, brought a bid of £900 in Swindon.
A natural history selection
IN Antiques Trade Gazette No.1655, I illustrated a first octavo edition of Audubon’s Birds of America, 1840-44, that sold for $48,000 (£25,920) in a May sale held by Northeast Auctions of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In their August 21-22 sale they had another, half morocco bound and rather better looking set – one originally sold by Clarendon Harris, a book dealer of Worcester, Mass – which made $64,000 (£35,200).
