Books and Works on Paper

Cambridge auction attracts high bids to secure several delights discovered in job lots

A copy of the 1543, first German language edition of a work that centuries later, in 'Printing and the Mind of Man', was declared to be “perhaps the most celebrated and most beautiful herbal ever published” was offered by Gloucestershire saleroom Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) on October 12.

Documents were consigned among contents of a house owned by the Arkwright family

Estimated at £600-800, a 1777 first in marbled board covers of John Chapman and Peter Andre’s 'Map of the County of Essex from an Actual Survey' was sold for what would appear to be an auction record.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Much, much earlier than most other entries in a comics and comic art sale that ran at Heritage (25% buyer’s premium) from September 30 to October 2 were examples of the work of Winsor McCay (c.1866-67-1934), who was well known as an accomplished editorial and political cartoonist and for his work in the world of animation and cartoon strips.

The big attraction in a job lot estimated at £60-100 that went on to sell for £14,000 in a September 23 sale held by Ewbank’s (25% buyer’s premium) was a copy of Britannia: or, a Chorographical Description…, Dr Edmund Gibson’s 1695, updated and English language version of a well-known earlier work.

A police ledger sold more than triple its top estimate featured original mug shots and criminal records relating to 500 people including a woman accused of plotting to kill Prime Minister David Lloyd George in 1917.

Translation was first time a major poem of antiquity appeared in an English language form.

Bid to £3400, a 1703 first edition of Martin Martin’s Description of the Western Islands of Scotland in a later full calf binding proved the most expensive item in the 250-lot book and ephemera section that opened an October 5-7 auction at Stride & Son (18% buyer’s premium).

An edition of Queen Victoria’s Leaves from the Journal of our Life on the Highlands… took £550 at a Mallams (25% buyer’s premium) sale of September 23.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions

Though the dust jacket featuring one of Pauline Baynes’ illustrations for the book is torn with loss and exhibits a number of patched repairs, a 1950 first edition of 'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe' did sell for £1100 against a guide of £500-700 on October 6 at Buckinghamshire saleroom Bourne End Auctions (17.5% buyer’s premium).

First and only published volume of South American work appears in London saleroom

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Illustrated here is a complete deck of James Moxon’s ‘Geometrical’ cards, each bearing figures of scientific instruments and dating from the mid-1690s.

Collection gathered in by a local farmer comes to auction in North Yorkshire

Four auction records were set in the first 90 minutes of a recent four-day comics and comic art auction conducted by Heritage (20% buyer’s premium).

Very much the star turn in a Philadelphia sale of September 21 was an extremely rare copy of 'New Englands First Fruits…', a small quarto work, running to just 26pp, that was printed and published in London in 1643.