Book

The photobook genre is almost as old as photography itself and can be collected at all price points, as Bonhams’ Matthew Haley reports.

A volume containing Richard Hooker’s sixth and eighth books dealing with The Lawes of Ecclesiastical Policy… is a 1651 re-issue of an edition first published three years earlier. The principal attraction, however, was the armorial binding.

Published in 1895, Wright & Dixon’s Guide to American Golf… was one of the very first books on the game to appear in that country. A copy sold on April 12 in San Francisco for $42,500 (£29,930) was billed as “perhaps the only copy extant”.

First such pocket atlas published in England leads a look at highly diverse auction selection

The English-born political theorist Thomas Paine lived through the most turbulent of times.

A number of books on plastic surgery featured in a recent Californian sale including an 1833, first English edition of Johann F Dieffenbach’s Surgical Observations on the Restoration of the Nose.

One highlight of a February 20 sale held in Italy was the handsome, armorially bound 1694 first edition of the Swiss born architect Carlo Fontana’s Templum Vaticanum.

‘Rock Star’ of physics and Nobel Prize winner, Richard Feynman, habitually refused to sign copies of his books, telling his editor: “I’m not going to go on TV and I’m not going to sign any books!”

Magazine by ‘heathen staff’ sells for 10-times top estimate in the city where it was produced...

Carroll rubbed shoulders with Wilde, Rackham, Tolkien and many other children’s works in recent auctions.

The theme of death was of particular interest to the Italian industrialist Giancarlo Beltrame (1925-2011).

George Orwell is the focus of a first look at a November 7 Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of books from The Library of an English Bibliophile, the seventh in that series to have been held since 2010. Orwell’s books made a significant contribution to the overall total.

A good-conduct guide for princes and rulers that focuses on the government of self, the family and the civil authorities proved particularly topical at a New York auction on October 17.