Latest News Articles by Ian McKay
Lizzie Borden auction lot recalls infamous New England axe murder trial
25 October 2017'No, you can't chop your Poppa up in Massachusetts', the refrain from a once hugely popular song, and the verse from a skipping-rope rhyme with which this article ends, both derive from the controversy that continues to this day regarding one of America's most famous murder trials – and to a legal document sold on October 19 by Heritage Auctions of Dallas.
Sims’ Psalmes answer saleroom prayers
23 October 2017Printed in 1606 by Valentine Sims of London and in a contemporary limp vellum binding with gilt armorials to the covers, the little 12mo volume shown above combines …the Kings Psalmes with The Queen’s Prayers of Meditations.
Virginia and Vanessa joint production is dust the thing
23 October 2017A copy of the 1925, Hogarth Press first of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway attracted a great deal of competition in a Cotswold Auction Company (20% buyer’s premium) sale of October 3 and finally sold at £18,000.
Book sale surprises spring up in the north and south
23 October 2017Sales held on consecutive days in Edinburgh and London produced two lots that ended up selling for far, far higher than expected sums.
Early printed works measure up
23 October 2017The celebrated Columbus letter announcing his discovery of a New World, sold for $620,000 (£462,000), was very much the star turn at Bonhams New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on September 26 (see ATG No 2313).
Further journeys worldwide via the Bonham library
16 October 2017Last week’s first report on the fine travel library of John and Suzanne Bonham at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) focused on the Middle East, India, Central Asia and the Far East. This second selection begins with an African discovery and ends at the South Pole.
Warblers, hummers and hunters at auction
16 October 2017Pictures, prints and taxidermic displays accounted for the larger part of the Ornithology Sale held by Keys (17.5% buyer’s premium) on September 22, but it also offered some 175 book lots, many of them multiples.
Logarithms that add to trigonometry study
16 October 2017Sold for £1100 by Chiswick Auctions (23% buyer’s premium) on September 27 was a copy of the posthumously published, 1633 first of Henry Briggs’ Trigonometria britannica….
Beatrix Potter family links
16 October 2017Children’s books sold at Forum included a couple of appealing Beatrix Potter items that were first owned by Francis William Clark, who was just two when he was sent a 1912 first of The Tale of Mr Tod.
Reach for the stars, take an Irish tour or Potter around
16 October 2017An example of the extremely rare, “surreptitious” edition of John Flamsteed’s Historia Coelestis… – a star atlas that is one of the great rarities in its field – made a record £43,000 at Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on September 27.
The polar explorers who searched for fellow explorer Franklin
16 October 2017A single-owner collection focusing on the polar regions was a notable feature of the travel section of the October 4 sale held by Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium). It included, at a 10-times estimate £3000, the posthumously published Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph Rene Bellot.
Logbook recording brutal treatment of teenage 'exiles' transported to Australia sells for £11,000 at Gloucestershire auction
10 October 2017A logbook recording three voyages to Australia and the Far East made in 1847-52, two of them transporting young prisoners, or 'exiles', to Australia, led Dominic Winter’s latest sale.
Columbus discovers the ‘wrong’ kind of Indies
09 October 2017“My lord, because I know that you will take pleasure in the great victory which our Lord has granted me on this voyage, I write you this letter, by which you will learn how… I crossed to the Indies, where I found many islands populated with innumerable inhabitants; and I have taken possession of all of them…”
Following the A-Z travel guide at auction
09 October 2017The first book sale of the new season at Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) dispersed the travel library of John and Suzanne Bonham, well-known specialist dealers in the British and international antiquarian book trade.
La Reine’s regal return
09 October 2017When the French literature section of the great Bradley Martin library was sold in 1989 (at Sotheby’s Monaco), an 1845 first of 'La Reine Margot' by Alexandre Dumas père was offered as part of a job lot of three of his works that sold for FFr11,500 (£1100).
Orang-utans at auction – 'Man of the Forest' emerges to makes two rare public appearances
05 October 2017Once believed by other inhabitants of the region to be people who hid in the forests so as to avoid being put to work or taken as slaves, orang-utans undertook a couple of significant auction outings as part of Sotheby's sale of the travel library of John and Suzanne Bonham.
Chicago before the inferno
02 October 2017An exceptionally rare bird’s eye view of Chicago before the devastating fire of 1871 that destroyed so much of the old city was sold for $160,000 (£118,520) by local saleroom Leslie Hindman (20/20/12% buyer’s premium) on September 15.
English Civil War and much more in Exeter
02 October 2017A single-owner collection relating to the English Civil War featured among the 740 lots that made up a September 6 sale held by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).
Comets, astronauts and out of this world selfies
02 October 2017A ‘Glory of Science’ sale held by Bloomsbury Auctions (24/18/12% buyer’s premium) on September 14 included books, prints, photographs, letters, etc, and was one in which astronomy and space travel played a significant part where higher bids were concerned.
Air-raid reading for children
02 October 2017Mostly sold by Woolworth’s stores at 3d each, Mighty Midgets ‘Blitz’ books helped distract children who had to spend nights in air-raid shelters or Underground stations during the Second World War.