Books and Works on Paper

Ornithological books and artworks have played their part in the success of two recent sales and a selection of just a few of those lots begins with books from the Ladwell library.

A Californian sale of March 7 certainly offered great variety in age, content and price range. Promoted as A Biblio-Medley for All Tastes, it ran to well over 500 lots across its printed and supplementary, online catalogues – with at least one lot, a volume of the works of Arthur Hallam, sold for just $10.

Though it sold just a touch under the lower estimate, a copy of the 1938 launch issue of Beano was the top lot in a Comic Book Auctions (19% buyer’s premium) timed auction of March 3 held on thesaleroom.com.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from March 19-30, 2019.

Seventeenth century philosophical work sold in Sussex discusses nature of life and death.

The lot that gained all the publicity in a recent Shropshire sale, even national newspaper coverage, was a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Conducted by Christie’s Paris (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) in collaboration with Bertrand Meaudre of Paris dealer Librairie Landarchet, a February 20 sale featured the dispersal of the library of Marc Litzler for a premium-inclusive total of €4.4m (£3.82m).

The concertina-cut novelty pictured here is one in which a painted roundel of a cottage pulls up to reveal a large mouse.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from March 12-23, 2019.

A very rare and inscribed example of CS Lewis’ first published work, a 1919 collection of verses previewed ATG No 2377, was sold recently in Oxford for £2800. Spirits in Bondage was part of the extensive book section of a January 30-31 sale at Mallams (23% buyer’s premium).

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from March 5-16, 2019.

A small group of lots in a recent Edinburgh sale were once part of the library of the late 5th Earl of Lovelace at Torridon House.

Two unusual and successful lots from a February 20 sale held by Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium) of Ipswich.

A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening… is the single volume that I have selected from a recent Gloucestershire auction in which job lots were very much in evidence and that acted as a sort of extra, clearing-the-decks sort of exercise in the saleroom’s calendar.

Sold for £900 by Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium) on February 19 was an elaborately bound example of Monsieur Gravelot’s Almanach Iconololgique… for the year 1771.

Illustrated with eight hand-coloured litho plates, each with moveable flaps, The Puppy’s Visit To His Friends was issued as one of EC Bennett’s moveable books, probably in the 1850s.

Late 18th-century works for children combine juvenile diversion with moral instruction.

Letters on the sails of the vessels seen on the title-page of Pedro de Syria’s Arte de la Verdadera Navegacion, published in Valencia in 1602, are a reminder that it was Columbus’ voyage in Spanish service just over a hundred years earlier that led to the ‘discovery’ of the Americas.

Catalogued as the most valuable Silver Age comic book by far, a copy of Issue No 15 of Amazing Fantasy, the 1962 comic that saw the first appearance of Spider-Man, sold for £14,500 in a January 25 sale held by Excalibur Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) of Amersham.

Richard P Feynman (1918-88), recognised as a genius in the field of mathematical physics and once described as ‘the most original mind of his generation’, was a star turn in a November 30 sale at Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium).