Books & Periodicals

The Antiquarian Bookdealers’ Association is to rebrand its young booksellers’ apprenticeship scheme as a training programme following a change in employment law.

From the earliest days a common bond has bound the antiquarian book trade together. And, more than ever, professional standards matter.

ATG’s timeline chronicling the history of book dealing associations from 1906 to 2016…

A selection of forthcoming UK and international auction highlights.

For the second year running, two major events – the ABA’s London International Antiquarian Book Fair, running from June 1-3 at the National Hall, Olympia, and the London International Book Fair organised by the PBFA at the ILEC Conference Centre in SW6 on June 2-3 – will run under the marketing umbrella Rare Books London.

From Arthur Rackham to Gerald Scarfe, there is a burgeoning market for original illustration art of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Literary anniversaries are a good story to tell to potential sellers but do they bring greater interest and greater prices?

The name of William Heath Robinson (1872-1944) is enshrined in the Oxford English Dictionary. Definition: “Ingeniously or ridiculously over-complicated in design or construction”.

A selection of stand-out results achieved at auctions in the UK and abroad.

A new generation of dealers, auctioneers and fair organisers is keen to show there is a thriving future for the trade.

Tom Lintern-Mole has just finished filming a video in his shop to advertise the latest book fair on YouTube.

No fewer than 840 lots were offered in the bumper April 5-6 sale held by Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium). The most successful of them, at a record £32,000, was a presentation copy of a pioneering work that has been described as “the first practical statement of socialist doctrine”, Robert Owen’s A New View of Society… of 1813-14.

A major attraction in a PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) sale of April 6 was the Samuel Hessel ‘DNA’ collection of scientific papers, journals and books.

A Beatrix Potter collection running to 62 lots got a Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of March 30 up and running.

Offered by Keys (20% buyer’s premium) on April 6, the Sir Malcolm Arnold Collection proved to be a problematic one.

Published in 1631 in Rinteln, a small town in Lower Saxony, Friederich Spee’s Cautio Criminalis, seu de Processibus Contra Sagas is a first edition in much later boards of a book that has been described as the first serious attack on witchcraft trials and their use of torture.

Tintin has had another good day out in Paris. In an Artcurial sale on April 8 a European collector paid €753,000 (£643,815), including premiums and taxes, to buy an ink drawing done by Hergé for the 1937 comic book Tintin in America.