Books and Works on Paper

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.

Boasting what have been described as the first accurate anatomical illustrations of the foetus in utero among its 39 engraved plates, a 1761, second edition of William Smellie’s 'Sett of Anatomical Tables… of the Practice of Midwifery' was one of the highlights of an online-only Forum (25/20/12.5% buyers premium) sale of September 15.

Early views of the city now known as Kolkata reveal 19th development under empire

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Inscribed to her husband and fellow poet, Ted Hughes, the dedication copy of the first and only collection of Sylvia Plath’s verses to be published in her lifetime, The Colossus and other Poems, sold for a record £75,000.

The latest in a series of auctions to draw on the private library of one of the more prominent antiquarian book dealers of his generation, William S Reese (1955-2018), ran from September 1-14 at Christie’s New York (26/20/14.5% buyer’s premium).

Two albums of photographs taken by fellow cricketer and friend pitch in at four-figure sum.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Doubling its mid-estimate to sell at £50,000, one of the top lots in a sale of September 7 was Paulo Forlani’s Il Disegno del discoperto della nova Franza…