Books & Periodicals

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

At a recent PBFA fair, dealer John Underwood sold a collection of albums of mosses compiled by the naturalist Frederick DuCane Godman (1834-1919) to Horsham Museum & Art Gallery.

Before railway mania came canal mania – key to the Industrial Revolution. This 1830 second edition copy of George Bradshaw’s 'Map of Canals, Navigable Rivers, Rail Road &c. in the Midland Counties of England from Actual Survey' sold for £500 (estimate £200-300) at Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on October 8.

“Bradshaw becomes first-hand for any sort of railway guide – you can argue whether or not he was the very first to create them, but he was the first to be successful. It is a bit like everyone calling vacuum cleaners Hoovers.”

Highly influential three-volume set on maths takes a record £90,000 sum in London

It was not in the best of conditions, but an unusual cartographic lot in an August 6 sale at Thomson Roddick (17.5% buyer’s premium) of Carlisle sold at £420.

Florence Nightingale was a name that figured prominently among the 130 lots of books and ephemera offered as part of a September 2 sale in Shrewsbury.

Collection of hotelier, broadcaster and food writer includes many early works.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

An October 27-30 sale of more than 2800 lots at Reiss & Sohn of Königstein-im-Taunus includes a 1583 first of Georg Bartisch’s Opthalmodouleia…, a famous work on eye surgery that is also the first extensively illustrated account of any surgical speciality.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

Jane Austen was among the names to note in a recent Norfolk sale, with the day’s top bid securing a four-volume, 1818 first of Northanger Abbey & Persuasion.

Letter highlights early fossil fan Mary Anning who is soon to be the subject of a film.

MADAM – The auction report (issue 2459, page 22) highlighting the sale of two Napoleonic documents at Sotheby’s is most interesting when you consider the two very different characters they were addressed to.

Future president’s 'How to Get Rich' is a curious feature of a bumper summer sales week

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from September 29-October 10, 2020.