A 1758 Oxford first (in modern half calf) of one of William Borlase’s works, The Natural History of Cornwall, made £800, but more of a surprise was a £780 bid for a volume of half-a-dozen pamphlets.
The one identified in the catalogue was an Account of the Exploration of Subterranean Chambers at Treveneague, in the Parish of St Hilary, Cornwall.
The principal portion of the library of the late John Brook, a historian of Cornish mining, will be sold in 2018, but five lots were offered in this sale. An album of 25 sepia tinted photographs, all titled and inscribed ‘J.C. Burrow. Photographer, Camborne’, made £2100 at the auction on August 22.
Most of these photographs do not feature in ‘Mongst Mines and Miners, the 1883 work for which Burrow is best known.
Other highlights included an archive of some 1500 items relating to the 18th century Madeira wine trade business of James & Alexander Gordon of Letterfurie in Banffshire, at £2000. In February another portion of this archive had sold at £2500.
An 1886 first of George Bernard Shaw’s Cashel Bryon’s Profession, inscribed “To my friend Norman after tapping his Appolinaris…” made £480.
