Collectables

Jane Austen’s House Museum in Hampshire has successfully raised the £35,000 required to buy a fragment of a letter written by the novelist in 1814. The rare manuscript was being sold on behalf of its private owner by London dealer Maggs.

A 1935 oil on canvas of a Bugatti and Alfa Romeo speeding along a track is offered for £1550 during English and Continental Antique’s next 'Wings and Wheels' exhibition.

Works by Russia’s most revered literary figure rack up auction records in London saleroom.

Almost 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.

Capital comes to life after summer break with fairs, auctions and numerous gallery shows.

The 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.

A first edition of the most famous work in angling literature will be offered at auction in North Yorkshire.

Highlights at Roseberys (25% buyer’s premium) brought more than the usual sense of trans-centuries time travel experienced at such auctions of 500 disparate lots.

A 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.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

This double-page engraved chart is from an early-17th century pilot book which is another of the highlights from the Mopelia Collection of atlases and travel books offered in London.

The name Marklin always suggested an O gauge loco and tender offered at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) would find a buyer against a £200-300 estimate but there was a considerably greater head of steam when international collectors looked closer.

Lyon & Turnbull’s African & Oceanic Art & Antiquities auction in Edinburgh on October 16 includes this Apulian-Corinthian helmet from the late 5th-early 4th century BC.

This map of Milan will feature in the sale of books and manuscripts to be held in the city by Il Ponte on September 24.

Huge York event includes a mobile installation on bird theme.

An archive relating to a once famous Suffolk dynasty comes for sale at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet on September 10-11. The diaries, journals and letters of Lady Ann Cullum (1807-75) of Hardwick House near Bury St Edmunds form part of a Fine Interiors sale.

Useful buys if you want to know how to ‘pott a Swan’, ‘fry Harticholk’ or even ‘stew Lettice’

Among a number of finely bound works offered in a July 4, Cambridge sale were three family owned examples of the work of Captain Charles Elsden Gladstone (1855-1919), a retired Royal Navy officer.