Books & Periodicals

Two unusual and successful lots from a February 20 sale held by Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium) of Ipswich.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from March 5-16, 2019.

A small group of lots in a recent Edinburgh sale were once part of the library of the late 5th Earl of Lovelace at Torridon House.

A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening… is the single volume that I have selected from a recent Gloucestershire auction in which job lots were very much in evidence and that acted as a sort of extra, clearing-the-decks sort of exercise in the saleroom’s calendar.

Sold for £900 by Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium) on February 19 was an elaborately bound example of Monsieur Gravelot’s Almanach Iconololgique… for the year 1771.

Illustrated with eight hand-coloured litho plates, each with moveable flaps, The Puppy’s Visit To His Friends was issued as one of EC Bennett’s moveable books, probably in the 1850s.

A first-edition presentation copy of Jacob’s Room (1922) by Virginia Woolf bearing an inscription to her sister Vanessa Bell is on offer for £85,000 at Peter Harrington’s exhibition In Her Own Words: Works by Exceptional Women.

A very rare and inscribed example of CS Lewis’ first published work, a 1919 collection of verses previewed ATG No 2377, was sold recently in Oxford for £2800. Spirits in Bondage was part of the extensive book section of a January 30-31 sale at Mallams (23% buyer’s premium).

Tony Parkinson, who died suddenly just after Christmas, at the age of 75, was a much-respected and well-loved book dealer in Southport for over 40 years. He opened Parkinson’s Books in its current location on Lord Street in 1981, specialising in antiquarian books, of which he had an encyclopaedic knowledge.

Late 18th-century works for children combine juvenile diversion with moral instruction.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from February 26-March 9, 2019.

Letters on the sails of the vessels seen on the title-page of Pedro de Syria’s Arte de la Verdadera Navegacion, published in Valencia in 1602, are a reminder that it was Columbus’ voyage in Spanish service just over a hundred years earlier that led to the ‘discovery’ of the Americas.

Richard P Feynman (1918-88), recognised as a genius in the field of mathematical physics and once described as ‘the most original mind of his generation’, was a star turn in a November 30 sale at Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium).

In ATG No 2380 February 23 I wrote a piece on the annual antiques fair held at Wilton House in Wiltshire from Friday to Saturday, March 8-10. It is worth noting that the Provincial Booksellers’ Association (PBFA) is running an antiquarian and out-of-print book fair at the Michael Herbert Hall in the village of Wilton on Sunday, March 10.

Heritage begins mammoth dispersal of Otto Penzler’s holdings of detective fiction.

Catalogued as the most valuable Silver Age comic book by far, a copy of Issue No 15 of Amazing Fantasy, the 1962 comic that saw the first appearance of Spider-Man, sold for £14,500 in a January 25 sale held by Excalibur Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) of Amersham.

Drawn from sales held in the last days of January in the UK and US, an artistic device of framing a view with trees in the foreground is demonstrated in the two plates reproduced below.

Shown below is a page from an 1897 Paris edition of Robert de Flers’ 'Ilsée, Princesse de Tripoli' in which the text is framed by 132 coloured litho illustrations, borders and other decorations by Alphonse Mucha.