Prior to auction the book specialist at the Norfolk saleroom TW Gaze (18% buyer’s premium) was particularly taken with a lot presenting two albums that dated from c.1903-11 and featured photographs of one of the great figures of cricketing history: WG Grace (1848-1915).
Taken by Richard ‘Dickie’ Bell (1874-1953), a fellow cricketer and friend who provided each image with its own brief caption, they were estimated at a relatively modest £200-300 but sold online on September 1 for £2800.
The illustration shown here depicts WG Grace sporting a turban at a match held in 1908 at Shillinglee Park in West Sussex.
As ever, the characteristically lengthy catalogue entries, or ‘essays’ as Robert Henshilwood, the TW Gaze book specialist describes them, tongue in cheek, provided enormous detail regarding this and many another lot.
Memories of Bengal
This illustration from the copy of Dalton’s Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal sold at TW Gaze for £1400 would suggest that pipe smoking was popular with both sexes.
One group of lots featured letters, diaries and other material relating to Arthur Tosio Peppé (1873-1949), the Indian-born son of Thomas Fraser Peppé and his wife Jessie, née Braidwood, along with other members of that family.
Among them was an 1872 first of Edward T Dalton’s Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, which among its 40 lithographed portrait plates reproduces photographs by Peppé and Sir Benjamin Simpson, was believed to be one of only 100 copies printed.
A rare survivor, it sold at £1400.
Bond back
In ATG No 2553 we noted the sale at £4600 of a poster issued in 1964 for Ian Fleming’s 1964 James Bond novel, You Only Live Twice, that had featured in a June 14 sale. That sale, it seems, was never completed and the book returned to TW Gaze, which in this August sale found another buyer, though this time at a much lower £2100.
