Latest News Articles by Ian McKay
TS Eliot’s cats climb to £4300 sale result
30 September 2019Signed by its author to the title-page, a 1939 first of TS Eliot’s 'Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats' sold for £4300 in a Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) auction.
Poets create a decent auction rhythm
23 September 2019The biggest literary impression in a recent Shrewsbury sale that combined medals and militaria with well over 200 lots of books and ephemera was made by poets – famous and otherwise.
British and Irish book auctions: September 24-October 4, 2019
23 September 2019Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.
A brief history of the written word
23 September 2019From a 5000-year-old pictographic tablet to a 5th century bible leaf - a small but fascinating London auction.
Mummy rises to a shock result in Exeter auction
16 September 2019The second published work of the ‘flower book lady’ has no other auction appearance
British and Irish book auctions: September 17-October 4, 2019
16 September 2019ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from September 17-October 4, 2019.
Record reveals the Grim Reaper’s toll
16 September 2019A final selection of works from the London summer sale of books from the Fox Pointe Manor library* includes a gruesome account of London’s ‘Great Plague’.
Early railway book steams into Bonhams sale
16 September 2019How very different London’s Euston station looks in this coloured aquatint from a copy of Thomas Talbot Bury’s 'Six Coloured Views on the London and Birmingham Railway'.
Auctioneers in South Cerney had a sense of huge interest
16 September 2019One of the star turns in the summer sale in South Cerney of Martin Orsky’s wonderful library emerged towards the end of the day. This was a uniformly framed set of five stencil coloured woodcut broadsides, heightened with bodycolour and glitter and representing ‘The Five Senses’, sold at £30,000.
Differing Defoes in single sale
16 September 2019Very different works by Daniel Defoe featured in an online summer sale in London: one famous, the other far removed in its subject matter and probably little known.
British and Irish book auctions: September 10-26, 2019
09 September 2019ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from September 10-26, 2019.
Ticket for Fonthill Abbey fame
09 September 2019Entry card for 1823 auction sells in Gloucestershire saleroom nearly 200 years later
Misty mornings and marshland shine bright at auction
09 September 2019Complete with 16 tissue-guarded photogravure plates in the original, stylish decorative cloth binding, one of 200 standard copies of Peter Henry Emerson’s famous Marsh Leaves of 1895 was the star turn in a recent Norfolk sale.
Double Darwin and further lots from the brilliant Braune collection
09 September 2019It was as recently as June 13 that a presentation copy of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species made a record $400,000 (£316,353) at Bonhams New York – as reported in ATG No 2398. However, barely a month had passed before another 1859 first attracted a substantial six-figure bid in London.
British and Irish book auctions: September 4-14, 2019
02 September 2019Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.
Pushkin pushes the boundaries
02 September 2019Works by Russia’s most revered literary figure rack up auction records in London saleroom.
Kipling pens his reading guidelines
02 September 2019Almost exactly contemporary, the two works featured here came from the library of Christian Heuer and were offered as part of a July 1-9 summer sale at Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium). Both are distinguished by the observations of their authors.
Astronauts mark fact from fiction
02 September 2019The highest prices recorded in a Space Exploration sale on July 20 were for video recordings and documents relating to the Apollo 11 mission that featured the first moon landing, but a much earlier, fictional account of a lunar expedition also impressed.
Coverdale comes top of family group
26 August 2019A 1538 Coverdale New Testament was one of the high spots of a 39-lot section of books from a single family collection that opened the Hansons (20% buyer’s premium) July 31 auction.
British and Irish book auctions: August 27-September 13
26 August 2019Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.