Books and Works on Paper

The second published work of the ‘flower book lady’ has no other auction appearance

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’.

How very different London’s Euston station looks in this coloured aquatint from a copy of Thomas Talbot Bury’s 'Six Coloured Views on the London and Birmingham Railway'.

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.

One of the star turns in the summer sale in South Cerney of Martin Orsky’s wonderful library emerged towards the end of the day. This was a uniformly framed set of five stencil coloured woodcut broadsides, heightened with bodycolour and glitter and representing ‘The Five Senses’, sold at £30,000.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from September 17-October 4, 2019.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from September 10-26, 2019.

Complete with 16 tissue-guarded photogravure plates in the original, stylish decorative cloth binding, one of 200 standard copies of Peter Henry Emerson’s famous Marsh Leaves of 1895 was the star turn in a recent Norfolk sale.

Entry card for 1823 auction sells in Gloucestershire saleroom nearly 200 years later

It was as recently as June 13 that a presentation copy of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species made a record $400,000 (£316,353) at Bonhams New York – as reported in ATG No 2398. However, barely a month had passed before another 1859 first attracted a substantial six-figure bid in London.

The highest prices recorded in a Space Exploration sale on July 20 were for video recordings and documents relating to the Apollo 11 mission that featured the first moon landing, but a much earlier, fictional account of a lunar expedition also impressed.

Almost exactly contemporary, the two works featured here came from the library of Christian Heuer and were offered as part of a July 1-9 summer sale at Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium). Both are distinguished by the observations of their authors.

Works by Russia’s most revered literary figure rack up auction records in London saleroom.

Jane Austen’s House Museum in Hampshire has successfully raised the £35,000 required to buy a fragment of a letter written by the novelist in 1814. The rare manuscript was being sold on behalf of its private owner by London dealer Maggs.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

This double-page engraved chart is from an early-17th century pilot book which is another of the highlights from the Mopelia Collection of atlases and travel books offered in London.

Among a number of finely bound works offered in a July 4, Cambridge sale were three family owned examples of the work of Captain Charles Elsden Gladstone (1855-1919), a retired Royal Navy officer.

A 1538 Coverdale New Testament was one of the high spots of a 39-lot section of books from a single family collection that opened the Hansons (20% buyer’s premium) July 31 auction.

“The wayfarer, as he reached him, saluted with a gesture of courtesy that had something foreign about it”.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.