A 1651 first issue of Thomas Hobbes’ great work on the structure of society and its government, Leviathan…, made £5800. In a rebacked contemporary calf binding, it showed some occasional spotting and staining.
Dating from 1630, a richly illuminated vellum deed granting citizenship of the Polish city of Krakow to a Joannes Stephanus Pusteria made £3200.
Title-page of Orkney, or the Orcades… – £2000 at Dominic Winter.
A further selection of works from the Scottish library of David Wilson resulted in a £2000 online bid for a 1697, Copenhagen first in period mottled calf of an early and rare history of Orkney, or the Orcades…
It was the work of Thormodus Torfaeus, an Icelandic historian employed by the Danish court.
Eskimo drawings
Published in Toronto in 1915, a very rare first of an oblong octavo collection of Drawings by Enooesweetok of the Sikosilingmint Tribe of Eskimo, Fox Land, Baffin Island, as the cover title explains, made £4400.
Comprising 21 photogravure plates after original drawings, this was one outcome of an official survey of the eastern coast of Hudson’s Bay carried out by Robert Flaherty, someone whose name is more familiarly associated with the 1922 film, Nanook of the North.
The sale took place on November 11-12.
