Book

Carroll rubbed shoulders with Wilde, Rackham, Tolkien and many other children’s works in recent auctions.

The theme of death was of particular interest to the Italian industrialist Giancarlo Beltrame (1925-2011).

George Orwell is the focus of a first look at a November 7 Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of books from The Library of an English Bibliophile, the seventh in that series to have been held since 2010. Orwell’s books made a significant contribution to the overall total.

A good-conduct guide for princes and rulers that focuses on the government of self, the family and the civil authorities proved particularly topical at a New York auction on October 17.

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.

“With the exception of Dürer’s Apocalypse, the most influential woodcut programme from Germany was that of the Cologne Bible of 1478-79.”

Handsomely bound, a set of Gould’s Birds of Britain offered as part of the small but select Dorros ornithological library at Christie’s New York sale of June 15 failed against a $60,000-80,000 estimate, but in a Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) sale of the previous day a very differently presented set brought a mid-estimate £36,000.

Bid to £5000 at Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 14 was a 1593 first of Thomas Fale’s 'Horolographia. The Art of Dialling'.

Leading a 75-lot Brontë collection sold by Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 10* was a set of two of the novels written by the sisters in the hugely productive years of 1846-47.

Sold for €62,500 (£54,825) by German auction house Kiefer (20% buyer’s premium) in a June 30-July 1 sale in Pforzheim was an 1867, Hamburg first edition of the first volume of Karl Marx’s 'Das Kapital'.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s much-loved tale of The Little Prince was first published in New York in 1943, with Reynal & Hitchcock issuing it in both French and English versions.

Andreas Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica is one of those rare epoch-making works, a publication that changes everything in its field and sets a standard for others to emulate.

Promoted in a catalogue issued by Fonsie Mealy (20/25% buyer’s premium) for its May 20 sale as something “for the collector who has (almost) everything”, an autograph section from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake was sold at €27,000 (£23,480).

Sensational results for Scottish author in Lyon & Turnbull sale recall a doomed family link...