A Francis Bacon collection included The Charge… touching Duells… of 1614. Bacon saw duels as a threat to authority and against the will of God. This work concerns a case, involving antagonists called Priest and Wright, that he brought before the Star Chamber – to see if it could “…doe any good to tame and reclaime that evil which seems unbridled”.
In modern panelled calf and with some loss to the title supplied in facsimile, it sold at £1600.
A collection of poems written by the suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst while she was in prison and published in 1922 was Writ on Cold Slate. A work that makes no appearance in auction records, it was bid to £1300.
That lot also included a 1907 first of The Convert, based on Elizabeth Robins’ play, Votes for Women!, which advocated militancy as the only means of achieving female suffrage.
Signed and dated to the front free endpaper, a 1953, New York first in dust jacket of Roald Dahl’s first short story collection, Someone Like You, was another lot to set a record, this time at £1600.
