First Edition

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).

Helen Day is a language teacher, collector of Ladybird books and expert on the history of the books and the company behind them.

A recent Freeman’s Hindman (28/27% buyer’s premium) sale in Chicago included a first edition of John Locke’s foundational text on civil society and the nature of government 'Two Treatises of Government….'

Inscriptions and annotations can make a massive difference to value

To mark the new-look Harrogate Book Fair dealer Anthony Smithson of The Keel Row Bookshop in Whitley Bay will be offering for sale a 1948 first edition of the Hercule Poirot novel 'Taken At the Flood' signed by Agatha Christie.

Turned down by several publishers, Beatrix Potter shouldered the expense of privately printing The Tale of Peter Rabbit with Strangeways Printers in December 1901.

Forum Auctions has set a record for a copy of JRR Tolkien’s 'The Lord of the Rings'.