Book

Famed for his range of characters, Barry Humphries was also a bibliophile of great taste

Estimated at £200-300 but sold for £4200 at Charterhouse (25% buyer’s premium) in Sherborne, Dorset, were two design books from the Royal Doulton workshop floor.

When a copy of 'The Ristigouche and Its Salmon Fishing' by Dean Sage came up for auction at Bonhams New York in 2011 it was described “the rarest and most beautiful book on salmon fishing and with an important chapter on the collecting of angling literature”.

A copy of pioneering female author’s novel Evelina appeared at auction for first time in a decade

The estimate of £1000-1500 reflected the condition of an Elizabethan ‘Great Bible’ offered at Cotswold firm Wotton Auction Rooms (20% buyer’s premium).

The first two great collections of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories were gathered from their original appearances in Strand Magazine by its proprietor George Newnes (Southampton Street and Exeter Street, Strand, London) and issued in book form.

Peter Arnold’s (20% buyer’s premium) auction of the first part of the Alexander Collection held in Melbourne, Australia, achieved a selling rate of 80% with 15 lots sold in the following days, all at the reserves, to several buyers.

A cornerstone in any early football library is 'Association Football & The Men Who Made It', the history of the modern game in its first half-a-century as written by Alfred Gibson and William Pickford and published by Caxton in 1905.

Over 300 watercolours were produced for each one of the 60 copies of a remarkable ornithological work

Erik Weisz (1864-1926) launched his monumental career as the illusionist Harry Houdini in 1891 as a specialist in card tricks.

First edition of Defoe’s final novel fought over by online bidders up to a hammer price of £16,000