First Edition

The Oscar Wilde Collection formed over 60 years by bibliophile and former dealer in Oriental antiques Jeremy Mason prompted collectors to come out in force and was 100% sold at Bonhams (28/27% buyer’s premium) in Knightsbridge.

A first edition of Agatha Christie’s Five Little Pigs published by The Crime Club (Collins), London 1942, was consigned to Wessex Auction Rooms (24% buyer’s premium) by the family of Phyllis Rice, housekeeper to the author at Greenway House.

Book dealers and auction houses are all saying the same thing about fantasy and sci-fi novels: once derided as not serious objects of desire, they are now eagerly sought after by collectors and achieving really big prices.

The records for JK Rowling’s early work sold at auction keep tumbling, both hardback and paperback

A set of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings realised a premium-inclusive $250,000 (£187,500) at Heritage Auctions of Dallas.

A rare first edition of Enid Blyton’s first published book, Child Whispers, hammered at £1400 in the Thomson Roddick (20% buyer’s premium) book sale on December 4.

The most important of only 23 known surviving copies of the first – and subsequently withdrawn – June 1865 edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been given jointly to Christ Church Oxford and the Bodleian Libraries.

With the first hardback Philosopher’s Stone at stratospheric sums, the soft cover value is rising steadily

When William Golding (1911-93) wrote his debut novel Lord of the Flies in 1953 it was rejected by nine publishers and damned as ‘rubbish and dull’ before being picked up by Faber & Faber.

A first edition copy of 'The Left Bank and Other Stories' by the Dominican author Jean Rhys (1890-1979) and 'Portrait of New York' by Cecil Beaton (1904-80) were offered together at Ewbank’s (25% buyer’s premium).

While TS Eliot’s poem 'The Waste Land' had appeared in book form in the US in 1922 – and in two magazines the same year – the edition published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press in Richmond, Surrey in 1923 was the first in the UK.

A recent rare books sale at Heritage Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) in the US delivered strong performances for a handful of coveted 20th century firsts in dust jackets.

Swann Auction Galleries (25% buyer’s premium) recorded head-turning sales during its series of New York sales in May.

A tiny Oxfam shop in Headington, Oxfordshire, was celebrating after a set of 12 books dropped off by an anonymous donor later sold at Bonhams for £13,000 (£16,640 with premium).