Books and Works on Paper

The last-minute discovery of a 1776 first edition of Adam Smith’s '…Wealth of Nations' was a magical, unforgettable moment for a Derbyshire saleroom’s book specialist.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from November 6-17, 2018.

Illustrated below is a spread from a 1488 edition of a popular account of travels to various parts of the world that is generally referred to as a compilation by Sir John Mandeville.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from October 30-November 9, 2018.

Published in 1962, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was the first book in a popular series of lupine tales by Joan Aiken (1924-2004), a prolific and prize-winning author whose specialities included the supernatural and children’s books that involved an elaborate, alternative history of Britain.

All rather slim – one in fact a single sheet broadside – the three items noted here were all part of a Bonhams New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of September 25 and, spanning some 80 years, all bear Boston imprints.

A handful of copies of Robert Morden’s 'Geography Rectified, or a Description of the World' have made a little more at auction than a 1680 copy offered in a Stacey’s (24% buyer’s premium) sale of September 10 – but all bar one of them were second or third editions of 1688 and 1693.

Formerly in the collections of a distinguished English bibliophile, Major John Roland Abbey, a copy of Luigi Mayer’s well-known set of Views in Egypt, Palestine and the Ottoman Empire was one of the highlights of a recent Scottish sale.

A 17th century manuscript grimoire that sold for £18,000 (featured on these pages in ATG No 2363) was very much the star turn of an October 2 sale in Sussex, but certainly not the only lot to catch the eye.

Rude Rowlandson print is among the highlights of Gloucestershire auction.

Private Collections, an October 3 sale at Bonhams (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium), offered works of art from a number of sources and among lots from the estate of the late Victor, 3rd Viscount Churchill – a cousin of Winston – there were a few books.

The dust jacket is far from pristine, but this 1933 first of The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas is signed and inscribed by both its subject and her lifelong partner, the writer Gertrude Stein.

They may not have been the most photogenic lots in the catalogue of a recent London sale, but a couple of lots were highly attractive for their significance in the maths and measurements field.

Eleven years after John Kennedy Toole committed suicide, fellow writer Walker Percy was the man who ensured that his only book, A Confederacy of Dunces, finally got into print.

Investigation into wine storage is unusual success in computing library auction.

Catching the eye in a German auction was a fine example of the most beautiful of all piscatorial plate books.

It may seem hard to credit nowadays, but photographs of fairies at the bottom of the Cottingley (Yorkshire) garden of two young girls, produced in 1917 as a practical joke, were taken to be genuine by many people – most famously, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Brought into a West Sussex saleroom some months ago, a manuscript grimoire, or collection of magic spells, invocations and more practical advice on ailments and aspirations, offered quite a challenge to the cataloguer.

Types of the Indian Army… of 1897 is a photographically illustrated oblong folio work from which the mounted carbon print shown below, one of 60 in all, is taken.

The first book printed and published in Antarctica was 'Aurora Australis', a work produced during the 1908-09 Nimrod expedition led by Ernest Shackleton.