Books & Periodicals

Sold at £140,000 in the first of two early manuscript sales held by Bloomsbury Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 8 was a lot featured in the front page story in ATG No 2447.

Featured in Previews, ATG No 2449, was an amusing illustration of the Vacuum Tube, a proposed new means of mass transport from the pages of the Glasgow Looking Glass, a publication that has come to be widely regarded as the world’s first comic.

Firsts of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice have made as much as £115,000* at auction.

A number of higher-priced lots featured in a sale held by Hindman (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) of Chicago this summer, where fine binding was very much in evidence on both individual volumes and sets.

Spread over two days and running to 600 lots, a very mixed sale held by Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) included Oscar Wilde’s 'The Importance of being Earnest' as one of the literary high spots.

Arnold ‘Jake’ Johnson’s library of thousands of volumes covering travel, big game hunting – the focus of the three lots featured here – sporting and other fields is being dispersed by Doyle (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) in various live and online auctions in New York.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions, August 18-September 3, 2020.

Each bearing estimates of £300-400, two lots in a summer online auction held by Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) brought substantially higher rewards.

Copy of newspaper containing what became the US national anthem makes sale appearance

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from August 11-30, 2020.

With their regular photographer isolated in Somerset, it was proprietor Malcolm Phillips’ partner, Sally, who used her iPhone to produce all the catalogue images for a Comic Book Auctions (19% buyer’s premium) timed sale on thesaleroom.com.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from August 4-20, 2020.

Christie’s New York (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) recently staged two important book sales online that between them raised almost $3.38m, including premiums.

An exceptionally varied and very successful recent Scottish sale contained a great many letters and plenty of fascinating manuscript material.

One of the “very earliest books printed in Arabic by means of moveable type” made £18,000 at Bloomsbury Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

Published in 1970, 'William the Lawless' marked the last appearance in full book form of Richmal Crompton’s much-loved schoolboy hero – almost 50 years on from the publication of the first, 'Just William' of 1922.

Running to just 10 lots and held online Essential Genius: Ten Important Manuscripts for Modern Times was a Bonhams New York (27.5/25/20/13.9%) auction.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from July 21-Aug 1, 2020.