Books and Works on Paper

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from April 4-27, 2018.

At some point in its life, an early photographically illustrated work on the art of wood turning offered in a recent Exeter sale had been converted for use as a postcard album, but it still sold for a four-times estimate £4300.

Successful lots in a Bonhams New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) March 9 auction included, at $85,000 (£61,595), a letter that Einstein wrote to his son, Hans Albert, on the very day in September 1945 that the Second World War officially ended.

In a career of remarkable highs and lows, incorporating high political office, financial scandal and near bankruptcy, enormous success as a novelist and imprisonment for perjury during a libel case that he had won years earlier, Jeffrey Archer has himself been the subject of many a caricature and cartoon.

Aldine press books of the early 16th century, mostly it seems in a good but much later full morocco or calf bindings, produced a number of the higher bids in a recent Yorkshire sale.

None of the works by the Elizabethan poet, courtier and soldier Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86) were actually published in his lifetime.

A signed and dated 1839 first (second issue) of Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby was one of many lots in a Heritage (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of March 7 that came from the library of James Seacrest, a Nebraska publisher and philanthropist, that were sold to benefit charities.

'Busman’s Honeymoon: A Love Story with Detective Interruptions' was the 11th and last of the Dorothy L Sayers books featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.

Cartographic rarities showed the way to strong results at the Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) saleroom.

Early children’s books, many from a single collection formed by the late Mary Joy Sanger, provided a principal attraction in a February 27 sale held in Penzance by David Lay (18% buyer’s premium).

An 80-lot James Bond collection offeredin a recent Lincolnshire sale had been formed over a 40-year period.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from March 20-29, 2018.

The first week of March ended with a flurry of sales in both the UK and the US. Together they brought a number of exceptional results.

A previously unknown copy of the Golden Age comic that heralds the arrival of Batman sold for a premium-inclusive $569,000 (£410,000) in York, Pennsylvania last week.

A first English edition of Charlotte Bernhardi’s translation of her father, Admiral Krusenstern’s Memoir… of his 1803-06 circumnavigation of the globe was one of the rarer items offered at Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium) on February 20.

Magazine by ‘heathen staff’ sells for 10-times top estimate in the city where it was produced...

A number of books on plastic surgery featured in a recent Californian sale including an 1833, first English edition of Johann F Dieffenbach’s Surgical Observations on the Restoration of the Nose.

One highlight of a February 20 sale held in Italy was the handsome, armorially bound 1694 first edition of the Swiss born architect Carlo Fontana’s Templum Vaticanum.

Selling at $400,000 (£285,715), the original cover artwork for the 100th issue of Amazing Spider-Man comic led a recent three-day American comic and comic artwork auction that raised a total of around $7.2m (£5.14m).

‘Rock Star’ of physics and Nobel Prize winner, Richard Feynman, habitually refused to sign copies of his books, telling his editor: “I’m not going to go on TV and I’m not going to sign any books!”