Books and Works on Paper

The Federalist…, a collection of essays first published in New York newspapers in the years immediately following independence, is today recognised as a seminal work on American political theory and a cornerstone of constitutional governance.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from June 19-29, 2018.

It was in December 2014 that Sotheby’s put an estimate of £100,000-150,000 on what it called at the time “probably the most famous and evocative illustration of the 20th century”.

A beautifully preserved 1937 first state copy of Tolkien’s 'The Hobbit' sold for £35,000 at Forum Auctions.

The Wassenaar Zoo in Den Haag opened its doors in 1937 and closed in 1985, but its wonderful library, essentially untouched since the 1970s, has only now come to auction in London.

Written in red ink on four sheets, the original draft script of Ronnie Barker’s famous ‘Fork Handles’ TV sketch of 1976 has been sold for £28,000.

Shown below is one of 20 hand-coloured plates from 'Masken des Römischen Carnevals'. This was a rare and separate 1790 Weimar issue of the plates that illustrated a work by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Roman carnivals published the previous year – an item that is itself a great rarity*.

Bid to a record €18,000 (£15,660) in a May 15-17 series of sales held by Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s pemium) of Königstein, near Frankfurt, was a first edition of Immanuel Kant’s 'Critik der reinen Vernunft'.

It was a four-page Mozart manuscript of an unfinished Allegro in G for piano and four hands that led the Sotheby’s (25/10/12.9% buyers’ premium) sales of May 22.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from June 4-16, 2018.

Dutch maritime charts feature in wide-ranging auction strong in travel and exploration.

Old hangars and even older tents provided two of the more successful categories in a recent three-day, 1600-lot sales week in South Cerney.

A hundred and eighty lots in a recent West Sussex sale that offered great variety and some real rarities came from the library at West Horsley Place in Surrey.

Marvel comics in considerable numbers were a feature of a May 10 sale held by Golding Young & Mawer (20% buyer’s premium).

An ink and watercolour drawing from one of Hergé’s finest works achieved a stand-out result at a recent auction in France.

Comic strip artworks to be offered as part of the June 5 ‘Illustration Art’ sale at Swann Auction Galleries will include a 1970 'Peanuts strip' by Charles Schulz estimated at $20,000-30,000.

Bid to $1.5m (£1.11m) in a record-breaking comic and comic art sale in Chicago was a Frank Frazetta artwork.

Science fiction and fantasy were among the lifelong principal collecting interests of the late Stanley Simon, a postal worker from Queens. In a recent 19th and 20th century literature sale held in his home city of New York a number of his books brought record bids.

Bearing a title that translates as ‘The Book of Correction of Optics for those who have Sight and Mind’, an early 14th century Arabic manuscript made a much higher than expected £450,000 during the recent Islamic week of sales in London.

Offered as part of a recent online sale, a scarce work by Walter Savage Landor that had remained unsold in a New Bond Street auction only last July finally achieved, on April 25 of this year, the high-estimate sum of £2400 that both salerooms had been looking for.