Books & Periodicals

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from May 14-25, 2019.

Billed as the first music to be both composed and printed in the New World, Juan Navarro’s setting of '…Quatuor passions Christi' was one of several items of Mexican origin to do well in a recent Americana sale.

Pitched at £15,000-25,000, a rare 16th century French work made its lower estimate at Mellors & Kirk (20% buyer’s premium).

A manuscript for Rebecca and a favourite typewriter were among the top lots in a collection of objects and ephemera once owned by author and playwright Daphne du Maurier (1907-89) sold at Rowley’s in Ely (22.5% buyer’s premium).

A flying log book belonging to one of the female pilots of the Air Training Auxiliary (ATA) who became famous for ferrying planes in the Second World War has been sold at Kent saleroom C&T.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from May 8-15, 2019.

Plague water is one of the more striking entries in a now worn but finely bound volume of cookery and medical recipes sold recently in London.

Sent to auction by a descendant, two partly broken and disbound journals relating to the early years in the naval career of William Chimmo (1828-91) proved an unexpected success in a recent South Cerney sale.

A library focused on Antarctic exploration gave a New Zealand saleroom one of its more successful book and manuscript auctions since the company’s foundation in 2011.

In the latest of our occasional series of collector interviews, we talk to entrepreneur Algy Cluff, a former army officer and oil and mining business supremo, about his collecting tastes

Ian Fleming firsts in a Swann of New York sale of May 14 will include a copy of Goldfinger of 1959 inscribed to a famous golfer, Henry Cotton, estimated at $12,000-18,000 (£9250- 13,850).

Bought by a German collector for €115,000 (£99,140) at an auction in Cologne, a 15th century illustrated account of 'Leben der Heiligen Altväter', or ‘Lives of the Holy Fathers’, was a great rarity.

Guide to the prostitutes and brothels of London tempts bidders at Staffordshire sale.

Tightly bound, clean and crisp, and “about the nicest copy we have seen” was the assessment by a specialist US saleroom of the biggest winner in its auction of a single-owner gambling memorabilia collection.

The German artist Heinrich Zille (1858-1929) was known for his caricatures and humorous and sometimes very blunt portrayals of the lower classes and demi-monde in Berlin around the beginning of the 20th century: his so-called milieu-studies.

Some 150 lots of books formed part of a recent Irish auction held at Fortgranite, Baltinglass, in Co Wicklow, the home for over 200 years of the Dennis family.

Offered as a part of the natural history section of a May 14 book sale at Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) is an extremely rare photobook on New Zealand ferns by Herbert Boucher Dobbie issued c.1880 – no copy of which, it seems, has previously been seen at auction.