Books & Periodicals

Guide to the prostitutes and brothels of London tempts bidders at Staffordshire sale.

Tightly bound, clean and crisp, and “about the nicest copy we have seen” was the assessment by a specialist US saleroom of the biggest winner in its auction of a single-owner gambling memorabilia collection.

The German artist Heinrich Zille (1858-1929) was known for his caricatures and humorous and sometimes very blunt portrayals of the lower classes and demi-monde in Berlin around the beginning of the 20th century: his so-called milieu-studies.

Some 150 lots of books formed part of a recent Irish auction held at Fortgranite, Baltinglass, in Co Wicklow, the home for over 200 years of the Dennis family.

Offered as a part of the natural history section of a May 14 book sale at Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) is an extremely rare photobook on New Zealand ferns by Herbert Boucher Dobbie issued c.1880 – no copy of which, it seems, has previously been seen at auction.

A very rare panorama of London that made £90,000 in a recent West Sussex sale was the Pick of the week in ATG No 2387, but many other things among the 200 lots offered in that April 5 auction caught the eye.

A 1782 first of James Stewart’s 'Plocacosmos: or, the Whole Art of Hair Dressing' illustrated with 10 plates showing hairstyles was offered as part of a Forum Auctions sale.

Bid to £19,700 in a recent sale was one of 100 signed, large paper firsts of Oscar Wilde’s 'The Importance of Being Earnest' published by Leonard Smithers in 1899.

British and Irish book auctions: April 16-27, 2019

First published in 1936, The Negro Travellers’ Green Book was a once indispensable guide for African-Americans in the age of segregation.

Given that the sale ran to a huge 1139 lots, the April 2-4 dispersal in Harrogate of the first part of the library of Robert James Hayhurst may be considered to have done well in achieving a selling rate of 85% at that gathering of Elzevir and other early printed works.

A bound volume of early works on a famous automaton chess player, featured in ATG No 2387, was not the only lot in a recent Cumbrian sale to produce a handsome return.

Running to 50 volumes in all, the official report on 'The Scientific Results of the Voyage of HMS Challenger during the years 1873-76 in Atlantic, Pacific and Antarctic seas' took some 23 years to complete.

Devoted wholly to modern firsts, a recent online sale presented the first selection of a single-owner collection – the second portion of which will be sold later in the year.

An incomplete set of that remarkable ornithological work, William Lewin’s 'Birds of Great Britain', was the most expensive lot in a recent Yorkshire sale.

For the first time in more than 100 years the Lombard Haggadah, a medieval Jewish text with unique illustrations, is on public display at the New York gallery of Les Enluminures.

The early weeks of March proved a particularly busy time for one saleroom in the US. As well as sales featuring the medical and scientific collections of W Bruce Fye, reported in ATG No 2386, Bonhams New York (27.5/25/20/13.9%) also sold the seventh instalment of Eric Caren’s How History Unfolds on Paper collection online, and in itsMadison Avenue rooms offered Extraordinary Books & Manuscripts.

Two first-edition versions of George Orwell’s 'The Road to Wigan Pier', the first part of which is an investigation into the working-class living conditions in Lancashire, Yorkshire and the industrial north, were published in 1937.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from April 16-27, 2019.