Books & Periodicals

As this illustration of the title-page shows, a 1549 London edition of the Bible offered in a timed online sale ending on March 13 held by East Bristol Auctions (19% buyer’s premium) had its shortcomings where condition was concerned.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

The book trade has called for institutions to be more proactive in reporting missing items after two notebooks belonging to Charles Darwin were mysteriously returned to Cambridge University Library.

A recently rediscovered miniature book by Charlotte Brontë (1816-55) is on offer at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair (NYIABF) this month.

Bound in blue cloth with a large embossed design to the upper cover and bearing a gilt-framed and lettered title, ‘Private Journal’, to the spine, a volume offered by Cadmore Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) was estimated at just £10-30.

Pictured and described here are six very different lots that formed part of a March 2 sale held by Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium).

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Bid to £2800 in a recent Norfolk sale was a detailed and now rare Map of the Parish of St Mary Abbotts, Kensington… dating from 1879.

Harry Potter just keeps on doing well at auction, and Hansons (25% buyer’s premium), which has enjoyed a particularly close and profitable relationship with JK Rowling’s creation over the years, had more to offer in a March 9 sale.

Polar material in a travel and exploration themed sale held on March 2 by Bonhams (27.5/25/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) produced a bid of £24,000 for a letter that Robert Falcon Scott wrote to a friend, Lady Goodrich, about his planned British Antarctic Expedition of 1910.

Dictionary inscription is that of the crime novelist’s maiden name, adding to value.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

The elaborately tooled and richly decorated binding with its gilt inner dentelles shown right was made to contain an address ‘To Percy L. Pewtress Esq., Organist at Lee Chapel’, who had served the congregation of that south-east London church from 1883-1922.

The original doctorate certificate awarded to Albert Einstein by the University of Zurich in 1905 will be a highlight offering at Bonhams in New York.

“It’s not often we offer for sale a library of nearly 200 volumes by the same publisher as a single lot – and certainly not one that fits in a small suitcase.”

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Potter & Potter’s Fine Literature & Modern Firsts Sale on April 26 in Chicago includes a copy of Oscar Wilde’s (1854-1900) The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

Many of the lots in an Oxford sale of February 23 formed part of the estate of Canadian linguistic and literary scholar, the late ‘Paddy’ Docker-Drysdale.

Billed as the star lot in a sale that ended on February 27, a scarce copy of the 1937 first issue of Dandy made a high-estimate £3450.

California dealership Denenberg Fine Arts has sold a full set of 80 prints from the Jugendstil magazine PAN to Chicago’s Driehaus Museum.