Books and Works on Paper

Inscribed copies of the works of Dodie Smith were among the attractions of a summer sale held by Stride & Son (18% buyer’s premium) of Chichester.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from September 22-October 9, 2020.

Plenty of Dickensian lots were on offer in a sale held by US saleroom PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium).

Stand-out lot in a travel, map and natural history sale held by Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) was a grand and elaborately cased set of the monumental 'Description de l’Egypte' of 1809-22.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from September 15-26, 2020.

Napoleon’s view after first meeting on St Helena did not improve on closer acquaintance

Always likely to produce one of the sale’s best results, a 1798 first of Thomas Malthus’ 'Essay on the Principle of Population' duly led the bidding in a recent German sale.

In 1916 around 500 copies of the historic ‘Proclamation of the Irish Republic’ were printed, of which today just 30 or so survivors are recorded.

Bid to €10,000 (£9100) in a timed online sale at Fonsie Mealy (25/20% buyers premium) this summer was a two-volume collection of medical and other receipts compiled by Mrs Mary Leadbeater (1758-1826).

Appropriately enough, the very first lot offered in a sale called Eureka! was one that focused on scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century, was an autograph manuscript of seven pages of annotated design drawings by Thomas Edison relating to his work on light bulbs.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from September 8-19, 2020.

Manuscript was brought to Italy from Constantinople and later printed in Vicenza

Robert Morrison, a protestant missionary, pioneer sinologist and author of several works on the Chinese language as well as a translator, has been called the ‘Father of Anglo-Chinese Literature’.

Mathematical work makes £300,000 in auction where composers also feature heavily

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from September 1-16, 2020.

Extensively interleaved with scholarly notes and running to over 700pp, a Japanese and English Dictionary compiled by JC Hepburn was a notable rarity in a Cornish summer sale.

Edition of Macbeth that once belonged to actor Charlton Heston.

The two ink drawings reproduced here both made substantial sums in a June 27 sale of comic strip artwork held in Paris by Artcurial.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

Featured in Previews, ATG No 2449, was an amusing illustration of the Vacuum Tube, a proposed new means of mass transport from the pages of the Glasgow Looking Glass, a publication that has come to be widely regarded as the world’s first comic.