Books and Works on Paper

Alice, Tennyson and Port of London plans all played their part in the success of a September 5 sale held by Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium), but the prize lot was something of much greater antiquity.

Sold for £560 by Thomson Roddick (17.5% buyer’s premium) on September 6 was a watercolour by Ella Du Cane (1874-1943).

In recent years Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) has enjoyed considerable success with cookery manuscripts and the most recent auction further enhanced the saleroom’s recipe for culinary success.

Bid to £45,000 at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) was an extensively revised and corrected autograph draft of what was to become Charles Dickens’ tale of ‘Mrs Gamp with the Strolling Players’.

Located on the Vistula river in northern Poland, the old city of Torun somehow escaped undamaged from the ravages of the Second World War and is now recognised as one of the country’s national treasures.

A Regency period guide to ballroom dancing, sold for a much higher than expected £800, was a rare and welcome entry in the book section of a September 6 sale held by Hartleys (18% buyer’s premium) of Ilkley.

Eureka Stockade has been dubbed as the only ‘battle’ to have taken place in Australia but was in reality little more than a skirmish in global terms. However, the 1854 uprising that cost nearly 30 lives is now recognised as a seminal political event in colonial history and one that marked the birth of democracy in Australia.

It was a busy summer for Keys (20% buyer’s premium), who had book sales in both July and August.

Jacob ben Asher’s Arba’ah Turim (The Four Orders of the Jewish Code of Law) was compiled in the early 14th century and its dissemination throughout the Diaspora led quickly to its recognition and acceptance by Jewish scholars as an authoritative, convenient and concise approach to Jewish law.

A small white zip-up bag used by Neil Armstrong to bring samples of lunar material back to earth following the historic Apollo 11 moon landing of 1969 was the star lot in a Space Exploration sale held by Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on July 20.

Tryggve Gran (1888-1980) – polar explorer and First World War aviator – was a man whose achievements and adventurous life were recognised in two lots offered by Christie’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 12.

A lavishly produced 'Souvenir...' book published in 1899 to benefit a Charing Cross Hospital bazaar held at the Royal Albert Hall included contributions from distinguished writers, painters and composers, along with their photographic portraits.

Sold for £420 in an August 24-25 sale held by Keys (17.5% buyer’s premium) was a 1939 first of Maurice Gorham’s 'The Local', with its 15 coloured litho illustrations by Edward Ardizzone.

Just the two outer panels of what had once been a six-part world map remained in a cartographic lot offered at Christie’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

Last offered at auction at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) in 1971, a pair of EH Shepard’s original ink drawings for Winnie-the-Pooh returned to their rooms to sell at £55,000.

A blaze which tore through Norwich Central Library one August morning in 1994 destroyed thousands of historic documents and more than 100,000 books.

Eight fine bindings are the focus of this report, which draws mainly on sales held in the UK and US in the summer months – but also includes one to come in the new season sales.

Music, in printed editions rather than autograph scores, played a significant part in raising a premium-inclusive €1.65m (£1.45m) for the third portion of the Pierre Bergé library to come to auction.

Pictured here is 'Fanny was obliged to introduce him to Mr Crawford’, an ink and watercolour version of an illustration made by Hugh Thomson for an 1897 Macmillan edition of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.

Tattooed from head to foot, this ‘Native of Nukahiva’ (in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia) features on one of the two frontispieces and a folding chart that form the illustrative content of the 1813, first English edition of Adam von Krusenstern’s 1803-06 Voyage round the World…