Books and Works on Paper

First and only published volume of South American work appears in London saleroom

Though the dust jacket featuring one of Pauline Baynes’ illustrations for the book is torn with loss and exhibits a number of patched repairs, a 1950 first edition of 'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe' did sell for £1100 against a guide of £500-700 on October 6 at Buckinghamshire saleroom Bourne End Auctions (17.5% buyer’s premium).

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions

Collection gathered in by a local farmer comes to auction in North Yorkshire

Illustrated here is a complete deck of James Moxon’s ‘Geometrical’ cards, each bearing figures of scientific instruments and dating from the mid-1690s.

Four auction records were set in the first 90 minutes of a recent four-day comics and comic art auction conducted by Heritage (20% buyer’s premium).

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Early views of the city now known as Kolkata reveal 19th development under empire

Boasting what have been described as the first accurate anatomical illustrations of the foetus in utero among its 39 engraved plates, a 1761, second edition of William Smellie’s 'Sett of Anatomical Tables… of the Practice of Midwifery' was one of the highlights of an online-only Forum (25/20/12.5% buyers premium) sale of September 15.

Very much the star turn in a Philadelphia sale of September 21 was an extremely rare copy of 'New Englands First Fruits…', a small quarto work, running to just 26pp, that was printed and published in London in 1643.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Two albums of photographs taken by fellow cricketer and friend pitch in at four-figure sum.

Inscribed to her husband and fellow poet, Ted Hughes, the dedication copy of the first and only collection of Sylvia Plath’s verses to be published in her lifetime, The Colossus and other Poems, sold for a record £75,000.

The latest in a series of auctions to draw on the private library of one of the more prominent antiquarian book dealers of his generation, William S Reese (1955-2018), ran from September 1-14 at Christie’s New York (26/20/14.5% buyer’s premium).

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Bid to £9500 rather than the suggested £150-200 was a copy of the first, and possibly only edition ever seen at auction of William Knight’s A Concordance Axiomaticall…

Doubling its mid-estimate to sell at £50,000, one of the top lots in a sale of September 7 was Paulo Forlani’s Il Disegno del discoperto della nova Franza…

This camera script produced for the ‘Waldorf Salad’ episode from the second series of Fawlty Towers was offered by East Bristol Auctions (19% buyer’s premium) in a timed online sale that ended on August 23,

In 1902 the author Booker T Washington sent a typed and handwritten letter to the Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie regarding his recently published work.