Books and Works on Paper

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions. All the sales are viewable on thesaleroom.com

Letter to fellow evolutionary pioneer detailed possible response to one of their critics

Undoubtedly one of the more unusual lots to have featured in these reports over the years, the 3½in (9cm) wide piece of gold foil pictured here bears an Orphic poem by one Agestratos, who dedicates his brief verses to Apollo in what is thought to be Doric Greek.

Three letters in the hand of Sir Walter Scott emerged from an old suitcase full of documents found in the attic of an Edinburgh home.

A great many works written and/or illustrated by Denys Watkins-Pitchford, or ‘BB’ as he was more briefly known, were offered in a December 8 sale.

Published in 1906 in a limited run of just 100 copies on paper and 20 on vellum was an edition of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia employing a red and black Subiaco typeface with red initials designed by Eric Gill.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Not just Harry Potter but also Tolkien and CS Lewis works generate serious demand in US

One of 250 copies of a ‘Special’ and signed first edition of Ian Fleming’s 'On Her Majesty’s Secret Service' is shown here.

Described as being a little fragile but otherwise good, this Victorian transformation game was drawn on both sides of a single sheet of cut and folded paper.

A handsome group of eight volumes commemorating the Great Exhibition of 1851 sold in Exeter had been presented to one of its commissioners, England’s serial Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone.

Bidding on an exceptionally fine, virtually mint first edition of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone offered in the special Firsts into Film section of a December 9-10 sale opened at $75,000.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Superb set of the Dickens classic was painstakingly assembled as originally issued

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Original French text, translated by Caxton, then illustrated by 1930s engravings

In Rodney Shirley’s monumental study of 'The Mapping of the World… 1472-1700', the very first entry is a simple, circular woodcut known as a ‘T-O’ map, one in which the continents of Asia, Europe and Africa are very simply shown as named segments.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Copy of ‘most influential work in the history of microscopy’ surfaces in Chicago saleroom.

Two very different lots from a November 10 sale held by Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) are noted here.