At the Cotswold Auction Company (20% buyer’s premium) sale on October 2 a copy was part of a job lot of seven books that made £1000 – among them five of the first six books in Aiken’s ‘Wolves Chronicles’ series.
In the writer’s altered world, James II has not been deposed and there has been no ‘Glorious Revolution’, though the Stuarts are steadfastly opposed by supporters of the Hanoverian cause. In Aiken’s London, however, there is also a special canal district and wolves have invaded England via a newly built Channel Tunnel.
Domestic bliss
Also sold at £1000 in this Cirencester sale, and at what may be a record price, was something much older and very different – a 1622 copy of William Gouge’s Of Domesticall Duties…
The full vellum binding was falling part, there was some internal staining and it was offered as ‘not collated’, but it seems that no copy of this guide to the duties of family members and their servants has made more at auction.
