First Edition

Included in Potter & Potter’s latest sale of Books and Manuscripts is a rare first edition limited issue of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest.

Small group of the author’s ever-popular works makes a big impression at Gloucestershire saleroom

Having featured prominently on television in a specially made part of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, Paddington Bear hardly needs any more publicity.

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).

The ‘property of a lady’, this concertina-style wallet book by Beatrix Potter, 'The Story of Miss Moppet', is a first edition published by Frederick Warne & Co, London & New York, 1906.

Catalogued as a ‘very good, complete copy in original condition of the first really modern scientific book published in England’, a 1600 first edition (Peter Short) of De Magnete by William Gilbert is estimated at £10,000-15,000 in Forum Auction’s Fine Books, Manuscripts & Works on Paper sale in London on September 29.

Freeman’s September 21 Books and Manuscripts auction, in Pennsylvania is led by an ‘extremely rare’ first edition of 'New Englands First Fruits' (estimate $20,000-30,000), a 1643 account of Puritan evangelisation in New England.

Copy of his first book was a later gift from Sir John Heygate to Tarka the Otter author

The headline borrows the title given to an online Christie’s (26/20% buyer’s premium) sale – one that presented more than 80 modern first editions.

Bid to £16,000 in a sale held by Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) of Dorchester was a 1921 first of Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious House at Styles.

Just one other example of Mary Shelley’s famous tale has made more at auction

A London saleroom offered what was billed as the only “known” surviving set of uncorrected galley proofs for Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone.

If social media makes you feel like Big Brother is watching you, and if truth occasionally feels stranger than fiction, then like many bibliophiles you might be exploring books that suggest models for society and the role of the individual.

One of the stand-out lots at Sotheby’s New York (26/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) was a 1949 first printing of The Intelligent Investor.

Swann Galleries is holding a sale of Books and Autographs in New York on February 17.

When Ian Fleming sent an initial typescript of his first James Bond book Casino Royale to his good friend Paul Gallico asking if it was publishable, he got the reply “the book is a knockout!”.

In the early 1880s Alfred Barnard, secretary of Harper’s Weekly Gazette (the magazine that morphed into today’s Harpers Wine & Spirit), decided to visit all distilleries in Scotland, England and Ireland.

Among the book lots offered as part of an October 7-8 sale at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) the earliest was a Burgundian ‘Hours of the Virgin’ manuscript.

I have just received ATG No 2516 wherein the old question of first edition and first impression is raised in the Letters section.

Top lot in a sale held by Mallams (25% buyer’s premium) of Oxford was a 1719-20, first edition set of 'The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe…', 'The Farther Adventures…' and 'The Serious Reflections…' in later but very smart bindings of red morocco gilt by Francis Bedford of London.