Books & Periodicals

AT Sotheby's sale in New Bond Street on December 7, a copy of John James Audubon's Birds of America set a new auction record for any printed book when it sold to the London art dealer Michael Tollemache for £6.5m (plus premium).

“I LOOK upon [it] with equal amazement, as I do upon St. Paul’s Cathedral; each the work of one man, each the work of an Englishman”.

THIS watercolour sketch comes from a remarkable 120-page First World War journal penned by Lieutenant Kenneth Edwin Wootton of the 1/21 Battalion, London Regt Tank Corps.

BLOOMSBURY Auctions are to reduce their buyer’s premium when offering the Richard Harris collection in two forthcoming sales.

A UNIQUE archive of original Enid Blyton material is being offered for sale by her elder daughter's estate at Ilkley auctioneers Hartley's on September 15.

“ED seriously injured late today when train hit car – Ritch”. When a shocked John Steinbeck received this telegram in May, 1948, he left immediately for Monterey, California, but by the time he got there his good friend Ed Ricketts, the man he later described as being “part of my brain for 18 years”, was dead.

WITH the retreat from Dunkirk so much in the news at the moment, Aguttes have a particularly topical offering in their June 18 sale of manuscripts, postcards and historical documents.

THE original autograph stock book of Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, found in a box of girlie magazines, sold for £25,000 (plus 17% buyer's premium) at the Shropshire auctioneers Mullock's in Ludlow.

• Stoker's great granddaughter puts unique cache up for sale • Collection includes, letters, photos and even table waresA remarkable collection of documents and artefacts relating to the ill-fated British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-13 will be sold by Bamfords of Derby on May 26. The cache of largely unseen material has been entered for sale by the great granddaughter of Edward Archibald McKenzie, a crewman on the expedition supply ship Terra Nova.

• Stock book should help rewrite story of leading artistAN overlooked item in a box of magazines sold at auction for a few pounds could help rewrite the story of one of the most sought after of England’s Victorian painters.

A MANUSCRIPTS dealer from Cheltenham has uncovered a major theft of letters from an American university. The case is now being investigated by the FBI.

WHEN Aaron Dean was asked to catalogue a local collection of Modern Firsts at Gorringes' Lewes saleroom, he knew he was dealing with something special.

A VERY Italian tale involving an important collection of papers that once belonged to the ‘father of art history’, Giorgio Vasari, took a new twist last month when a court injunction halted its sale by auction at the eleventh hour.

WILTSHIRE auctioneers Netherhampton Salerooms were celebrating a new house record on March 3 after a disbound album of Far Eastern topographical drawings sold for £43,000.

A PENCIL and watercolour sketch showing men at work on a celebrated escape tunnel was a major attraction in a log or record compiled in 1943-45 by a Scottish P.O.W. sold by Lyon & Turnbull of Edinburgh for £3200 on January 13.

A COPY of A Christmas Carol has now knocked Oliver Twist off the top of the tree to become the most expensive Dickens title ever sold at auction.

AUCTIONEERS across the country have recently been the recipients of this potentially interesting document, a copy of The Order of Service for the Funeral of Sir Winston Churchill, 30th January 1965.

BORN a wealthy European aristocrat and court painter to a Turkish Sultan, the Maltese count Vittorio Amadeo Preziosi (1816-1882) was nevertheless a familiar figure among the back streets of Istanbul.

FROM September 25 to 27 The London Art Book Fair will be launched at the newly expanded Whitechapel Art Gallery in Whitechapel High Street London E1.

A SUBSTANTIAL, and previously unpublished, collection of letters written by various members of the Bloomsbury Group to Helen Anrep (1885-1965) is to be sold by the East Sussex auctioneers Gorringes in Lewes on September 3, along with a collection of artworks by members of the group consigned from the same estate.