Book

After more than two centuries of collecting history, the market is once again changing how it evaluates – and values – rare books by women. Bonhams’ head of books Matthew Haley reports...

A trio of exhibitors at London’s rare book fair 'Firsts' ponder the market, their motivations – plus flooded shops and heavy metal.

Old cookery books are more than simply receptacles of food history. They speak of technological change, the availability and discovery of ingredients that came with the expansion of the known world and how the social standing of the cook or chef changed over time. They are also very much in collecting vogue.

A selection of highlights that dealers are taking to upcoming fairs.

A selection of highlights appearing at upcoming auctions.

ATG's pick of items sold recently at books and works on paper auctions.

Forthcoming buying opportunities in the UK and around the world.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from May 8-15, 2019.

Plague water is one of the more striking entries in a now worn but finely bound volume of cookery and medical recipes sold recently in London.

A library focused on Antarctic exploration gave a New Zealand saleroom one of its more successful book and manuscript auctions since the company’s foundation in 2011.

In the latest of our occasional series of collector interviews, we talk to entrepreneur Algy Cluff, a former army officer and oil and mining business supremo, about his collecting tastes

Ian Fleming firsts in a Swann of New York sale of May 14 will include a copy of Goldfinger of 1959 inscribed to a famous golfer, Henry Cotton, estimated at $12,000-18,000 (£9250- 13,850).

Bought by a German collector for €115,000 (£99,140) at an auction in Cologne, a 15th century illustrated account of 'Leben der Heiligen Altväter', or ‘Lives of the Holy Fathers’, was a great rarity.

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.

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.

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.