Books and Works on Paper

Early views of the city now known as Kolkata reveal 19th development under empire

Boasting what have been described as the first accurate anatomical illustrations of the foetus in utero among its 39 engraved plates, a 1761, second edition of William Smellie’s 'Sett of Anatomical Tables… of the Practice of Midwifery' was one of the highlights of an online-only Forum (25/20/12.5% buyers premium) sale of September 15.

Very much the star turn in a Philadelphia sale of September 21 was an extremely rare copy of 'New Englands First Fruits…', a small quarto work, running to just 26pp, that was printed and published in London in 1643.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Two albums of photographs taken by fellow cricketer and friend pitch in at four-figure sum.

Inscribed to her husband and fellow poet, Ted Hughes, the dedication copy of the first and only collection of Sylvia Plath’s verses to be published in her lifetime, The Colossus and other Poems, sold for a record £75,000.

The latest in a series of auctions to draw on the private library of one of the more prominent antiquarian book dealers of his generation, William S Reese (1955-2018), ran from September 1-14 at Christie’s New York (26/20/14.5% buyer’s premium).

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Bid to £9500 rather than the suggested £150-200 was a copy of the first, and possibly only edition ever seen at auction of William Knight’s A Concordance Axiomaticall…

Doubling its mid-estimate to sell at £50,000, one of the top lots in a sale of September 7 was Paulo Forlani’s Il Disegno del discoperto della nova Franza…

This camera script produced for the ‘Waldorf Salad’ episode from the second series of Fawlty Towers was offered by East Bristol Auctions (19% buyer’s premium) in a timed online sale that ended on August 23,

In 1902 the author Booker T Washington sent a typed and handwritten letter to the Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie regarding his recently published work.

Though around 30% of the 150 lots remained unsold, no fewer than eight of those offered in a held by Christie’s (15/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) in London brought six-figure bids.

On offer at the Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs sale held by Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh on September 28 is an anti-slavery broadside: 'The Sorrows of Yamba, or, the Negro Woman’s Lamentation. To the Tune of Hosier’s Ghost'.

Sold online for a record $20,000 (£16,340) at the former Butterfields, now Bonhams Los Angeles (27.5/26/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) salerooms as part of the David Lloyd collection of modern literature was a 1909 first edition of Frank L Baum’s 'The Road to Oz'.

Sold at $440,000 (£371,000), the most expensive lot in a three-day auction at Heritage (25% buyer’s premium) was a logbook kept on the B29 Superfortress bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.

Sold at Bonhams Skinner (27.5/26/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) was a 1584 first edition of Reginald Scot’s 'The Discoverie of Witchcraft….'

An early 19th century child’s mosaic alphabet, c.1820, is estimated at £100- 200 at Catherine Southon’s auction at Farleigh Court on November 16.

The ‘property of a lady’, this concertina-style wallet book by Beatrix Potter, 'The Story of Miss Moppet', is a first edition published by Frederick Warne & Co, London & New York, 1906.