However, in the Doyle (26/21/15% buyer’s premium) of New York sale of June 22 it was a fine example of the four-volume, first book-form edition of 1871-72 that turned heads.
In the original cloth bindings, it was bid to a much higher than predicted and record $22,500 (£16,190).
Sets of that original parts issue in its green and black paper wrappers have made much more, with a record $65,000 (then £48,510) paid for a set seen at Christie’s New York in 2017.
At $15,000-25,000, this illustrated note featuring Pooh and Piglet, sent in 1932 by EH Shepard to his literary agent, Curtis Brown, was the highest estimated lot in the Doyle New York auction. At Sotheby’s London in 2011, it had made £11,000 – then around $17,000 – but this time it raised $13,000 (£9350).
Go Gothic
Another record was established in the recent Doyle sale for a four-volume, 1794 first of Anne Radcliffe’s Gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho in refurbished and restored, but original paper-backed boards.
Bid to $6000 (£4315), it was among a number of lots in the sale that had once formed part of the Julius & Theodore Cohn family library and was last seen at auction at Parke Bernet in New York 1955.
