Volume with cover illustration by Edward McKnight Kauffer attracts collector at ABA Rare Books fair and other sales from the November event

• Frances Allitt
  
• 23 Nov 2018

US-born Kauffer spent much of his life in the UK working in graphic design and completed 18 book jackets for the publisher Victor Gollancz in the 1928, the only year when his firm used pictorial rather than plain yellow wrappers for its books.

BAS Books brought a copy of the crime thriller The Unholy Three to the recent event where it became the 17th volume in the collector’s hands – just one more to go. Other examples of Kauffer’s works to sell from that stand included The Golem by Gustav Meyrink and St Christpher’s Day by Martin Armstrong as well as the first two BBC Handbooks (1928 and ’29). All were in curated dust jackets.

The fair ran from November 2-3 at Chelsea Old Town Hall and hosted more than 80 exhibitors.

Another highlight sale was a copy of The Suffragette Journal dedicated to Emily Davison, accompanied by a handwritten letter from a witness who was present at the Derby and was only 15 yards away from where Davison threw herself under the king’s horse. It was ticketed at £1250 at the stand of Les Ashton. A copy of Bill Clinton’s autobiography My Life, inscribed to Mo Mowlam thanking her for all her work for peace in Northern Ireland, listed at £1950, sold from the same stand.

Alembic sold this unusual Victorian picture frame in the shape of a penny-farthing bicycle for £875 during the recent ABA Chelsea Rare Book Fair.

Meanwhile, Alembic sold a remarkable Victorian picture frame in the form of a penny-farthing bicycle, priced at £875.