Books and Works on Paper

Private Collections, an October 3 sale at Bonhams (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium), offered works of art from a number of sources and among lots from the estate of the late Victor, 3rd Viscount Churchill – a cousin of Winston – there were a few books.

The dust jacket is far from pristine, but this 1933 first of The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas is signed and inscribed by both its subject and her lifelong partner, the writer Gertrude Stein.

Eleven years after John Kennedy Toole committed suicide, fellow writer Walker Percy was the man who ensured that his only book, A Confederacy of Dunces, finally got into print.

It may seem hard to credit nowadays, but photographs of fairies at the bottom of the Cottingley (Yorkshire) garden of two young girls, produced in 1917 as a practical joke, were taken to be genuine by many people – most famously, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Brought into a West Sussex saleroom some months ago, a manuscript grimoire, or collection of magic spells, invocations and more practical advice on ailments and aspirations, offered quite a challenge to the cataloguer.

Investigation into wine storage is unusual success in computing library auction.

Catching the eye in a German auction was a fine example of the most beautiful of all piscatorial plate books.

The first book printed and published in Antarctica was 'Aurora Australis', a work produced during the 1908-09 Nimrod expedition led by Ernest Shackleton.

Types of the Indian Army… of 1897 is a photographically illustrated oblong folio work from which the mounted carbon print shown below, one of 60 in all, is taken.

Head in his hand and seated on a bucket for his 1941, first annual appearance, Oor Wullie, a favourite character from the Scottish Sunday Post, led the bidding in a September 9 comics sale.

“Conteyning divers Excellent & Approoved Remedies in Physique – and Chirurgery…”, an early 17th century manuscript of some 130 or so pages that seems to have been intended for publication, brought a much higher than expected bid in a recent London sale.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from October 9-20, 2018.

An American library on the history of computing formed by the late Erwin Tomash provided the new season’s first major sale.

A collection of fashion books and plates offered as part of an Exeter sale on September 12 was led at £1050 by an 1831, second edition of John Jackson’s The Improved Tailor’s Aera.

Before finally achieving success in 1945 with The Pursuit of Love and then with Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford had published three novels. Two of these made record sums in a recent Stansted sale.

Jean Théodore Descourtilz’s Oiseaux brillans du Brésil “…is so rare that I had begun to doubt its existence”.

Our round-up of British and Irish book sales coming up from October 2-12, 2018.

Founder remembered as anniversary sale sheds light on evolution of the Narnia Chronicles

Containing an original watercolour, one of just a dozen de luxe copies of the 1931, Harrap edition of Izaak Walton’s 'Compleat Angler', illustrated by Arthur Rackham, made a record equalling £10,000 at Gildings (18/12% buyer’s premium) of Market Harborough.

This linocut comes from one of just 30 copies of Rigby Graham’s 'The Casquets… the most dangerous Channel Islands' issued by the Brewhouse Press in 1972.