Manuscript

Two Herschel family-related historic items – a Royal Society King’s medal and a manuscript memoir – have changed hands at auction and in a private sale.

Running to over 150pp in all, an archive of 42 love letters sent by Bob Dylan to a high school sweetheart, Barbara Ann Hewitt, featured in a November 17 Marvels of Modern Music sale held by RR Auctions of Amherst, New Hampshire.

A round-up of art and antiques news from the previous seven days, including the auction of a Darwin autograph manuscript at Sotheby’s.

Illuminated manuscript c.1470 is a highlight in Gloucestershire saleroom

Calculations on planetary movements rise to the occasion in New York saleroom

Sixteenth century single folio manuscript displays orgiastic spree in graphic detail

Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) was another of the London salerooms that held a designated sale in Islamic week.

Sold at $440,000 (£371,000), the most expensive lot in a three-day auction at Heritage (25% buyer’s premium) was a logbook kept on the B29 Superfortress bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.

Bellmans is holding a special book and manuscript auction as part of the October sales series, on October 11, with the majority of books coming from one collection.

The principal portion of a two-part sale conducted by Sotheby’s New York included not one, but three lots that brought seven-figure bids.

Sixteenth century manuscript produced in a Florence monastery sells in Essex

A two-volume manuscript used to determine swan ownership in East Anglia from the 16th to the 19th century was sold by Sworders for a remarkable £54,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium).

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

Making its third appearance at auction in almost 60 years, the 34pp autograph manuscript of Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter’, a tale from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes collection of his stories that first appeared in The Strand magazine in 1893, has sold for $280,000 (£236,090) in Dallas.

Bearing as its title ‘Certain Directions for the Sending of Men and Comodities, & Cattle to Virginia’, a 10pp secretarial manuscript thought to date from c.1609 proved a major attraction in a July 14 sale held by Forum (15/20/12.5% buyer’s premium).

Rediscovered sculpted portrait heads a special report covering recent lots linked to the man who became emperor, dedicated to both his triumphs and defeats

The sale of Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh on July 13 included a document signed by the adventurer and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618).

The queen’s menacing message to Protestant courtiers makes an auction appearance