Forum Auctions

A final selection of works from the London summer sale of books from the Fox Pointe Manor library* includes a gruesome account of London’s ‘Great Plague’.

Very different works by Daniel Defoe featured in an online summer sale in London: one famous, the other far removed in its subject matter and probably little known.

Useful buys if you want to know how to ‘pott a Swan’, ‘fry Harticholk’ or even ‘stew Lettice’

Lots offered towards the start of sales at the same auction house prove successful.

Copies of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone impressed in several summer sales.

For three years now Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) has, in addition to its high-profile auctions, been holding fortnightly, online-only timed sales that in their diverse content, it feels, act as a useful bellwether for the book world at large.

Two recent auctions offered a number of 18th and 19th century English novels by authors unfamiliar to many readers but who are nevertheless in demand through their rare surviving works.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

The success of timed online auctions for London’s big auction houses is putting the format on the map for other salerooms too.

ATG asked practitioners to explain the ins and outs of this increasingly popular auction format.

A poet and dramatist, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was once considered by many to be the true author of Shakespeare’s plays.

A Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of May 30 ran to well over 540 lots in all, but it was very early in proceedings that a much, much higher than predicted bid of £26,000 was made on an 1853, presentation first of 'Palm Trees of the Amazon and their uses.

Old cookery books are more than simply receptacles of food history. They speak of technological change, the availability and discovery of ingredients that came with the expansion of the known world and how the social standing of the cook or chef changed over time. They are also very much in collecting vogue.

Welcome to the fourth annual supplement produced by Antiques Trade Gazette showcasing the world of rare books and works on paper. We are again delighted to be the sole sponsor, showing our heartfelt commitment to our industry.

Plague water is one of the more striking entries in a now worn but finely bound volume of cookery and medical recipes sold recently in London.