Books & Periodicals

Originally published in parts in the years 1804-12, George Brookshaw’s Pomona Britannica contains 90 colour-printed and hand finished aquatint and stipple-engraved plates of fruits then cultivated in Britain (pineapple pictured below).

Theodor Geisel, writer, cartoonist and artist, is better known as Dr Seuss, the author of a host of children’s books. These are now famous the world over for the magical way in which they used a repetitive vocabulary and striking images to aid reading and render it an enjoyable experience.

A letter that Edward Lear wrote in 1881 to a friend to whom he intended to dispatch two drawings of Athens was among the more successful lots that Bloomsbury Auctions (24/18/12% buyer’s premium) sold on October 19.

After a two-year wait, lots from the defunct manuscript investment scheme Aristophil will be resold at the Drouot in Paris next month.

Musical manuscripts, letters and photographs of composers offered at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on October 26 comprised the first part only of what was described as “a distinguished private collection” of books that is to be dispersed next year.

It looks very tatty, but the dust jacket shown below is apparently a rare variant featuring a classic 1937 design by Alex Jardine for a 1927 first ‘Coronation’ edition of the Café Royal Cocktail Book.

Featuring both real and mythical creatures, including a monstrous selection of denizens of the deep, this map of Iceland with its mountains, fjords, rivers, glaciers and a volcano is one of the more famous found in Ortelius’ Theatrum orbis terrarum.

Worlds End Bookshop, one of the dealers at the PBFA’s Christmas fair in Bloomsbury on Saturday, December 2, will be featuring a set of first editions by design icon David Hicks.

Literary enthusiasts could get their fix at Shapero Modern’s exhibition 'Still Reading' (until December 4) this month, held in conjunction with Sladmore Contemporary. It includes a number of maquettes and bronzes by sculptor Martin Jennings.

A botanical collection formed over several decades by DF Allen of Washington DC and sold on October 26 by Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) was small in numbers but focused on the exceptional.

Earlier works in an October 18 sale held by Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) included a scarce 1688 first of Randle Holme’s The Academy of Armory, or a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon, an heraldic work by the third member of a distinguished Chester family of heraldic painters and genealogists to bear that name. It made £1200.

A brief letter of 1864 in which Ulysses S Grant agrees to General William T Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’, a bold plan to destroy Atlanta, then march across Georgia to Savannah or Charleston during the American Civil War, sold for $100,000 (£75,755) on October 19, at Heritage Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Dallas.

Gilleasbuig Ferguson Rare Books trades from the Isle of Skye and is a member of the ABA, PBFA and ILAB.

Dated by the Edinburgh auctioneers to c.1815-17, a group of watercolours made on a voyage to the Middle and Far East was bid to a far higher than expected £13,000 in a 650-lot Lyon & Turnbull (25/20% buyer’s premium) sale of October 11.

The October 17 Swann Galleries (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale focused largely on early printed medical, scientific and travel books but also included, at $24,000 (£18,180), a first edition in Greek of the works of Herodotus.

Published by Ackermann in 1819 in its ‘Repository of the Arts’ journal, Four & Twenty Hobby-Horses All of a Row is an amusing coloured aquatint, accompanied by verses (by one L Harrison) that begin “Hobby’s the word, and onward sliding, All London Town is set a-riding:”.