Books and Works on Paper

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Though around 30% of the 150 lots remained unsold, no fewer than eight of those offered in a held by Christie’s (15/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) in London brought six-figure bids.

'Hortus sanitatis' (Gart der Gesundheit, Augsburg 1485), considered among the most important early works of natural history and one of the first scientific incunabula in a vernacular language, is on offer at Munich saleroom Ketterer Kunst on November 28.

Estimated at £3000-4000, this 9½ x 12in (24 x 30.5cm) albumen print by Julia Margaret Cameron of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, is offered in the Books, Maps, Manuscripts & Photography auction on September 15 at Lawrences of Crewkerne.

Catalogued as a ‘very good, complete copy in original condition of the first really modern scientific book published in England’, a 1600 first edition (Peter Short) of De Magnete by William Gilbert is estimated at £10,000-15,000 in Forum Auction’s Fine Books, Manuscripts & Works on Paper sale in London on September 29.

Bid to £65,000 in a Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) sale that ran online from July 12-19 was the ink drawing by Ernest Shephard shown below.

A small collection of the works of TS Eliot offered in a Canterbury Auction Galleries (22.5% buyer’s premium) sale of August 6-7 included what appears to have been a 1943, first US printing of his 'Four Quartets'.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Sixteenth century manuscript produced in a Florence monastery sells in Essex

A substantial collection of works by just one multi-talented and enormously influential figure was presented as part of series of sales held by Adam Partridge (20% buyer’s premium) in its Macclesfield rooms.

Sold online to a collector in France in a sale held by McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium) of Glasgow was a scarce copy in original boards of 'On Naval Timber and Arboriculture'.

A volume containing first editions of two important geological works by Dr Gideon Mantell sold for £2000 in West Sussex.

Copy of his first book was a later gift from Sir John Heygate to Tarka the Otter author

Making its third appearance at auction in almost 60 years, the 34pp autograph manuscript of Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter’, a tale from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes collection of his stories that first appeared in The Strand magazine in 1893, has sold for $280,000 (£236,090) in Dallas.

A 1914 edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland proved one of the principal attractions in a July 26 sale held by Gorringe’s (23% buyer’s premium).

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

The headline borrows the title given to an online Christie’s (26/20% buyer’s premium) sale – one that presented more than 80 modern first editions.

In the years 1881-82, the Rev William Essery was for many months a passenger on the SS Ceylon.

Inscribed to her husband and fellow poet, Ted Hughes, the dedication copy of the first and only collection of Sylvia Plath’s poems to be published in her lifetime, 'The Colossus and other Poems', sold for a record £75,000 in a Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) sale.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.