Sold for £40,000 as part of a Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9%) online auction that closed on July 9 was a 1719-20, first edition set of the three parts that make up The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, the Further Adventures… and the Serious Reflections…
This set, in a much later red morocco gilt binding by Bedford, was once at home in the library at Skelmorie Castle in Ayrshire, as was a very rare 1727 first issue of Defoe’s Conjugal lewdness or matrimonial whoredom, also known as ‘A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed’. It was in a matching Bedford binding.
The first copy of the first issue seen at auction in over 50 years, according to Forum, this is a work that Furbank & Owens’ bibliography of Defoe’s works describes as “A didactic treatise… describing the many offenses that make a hell of the sacred state of marriage and stigmatising the many sorts of vice and sexual immorality that may be practiced under its cloak”. It sold at £8000.
