A volume of Institutes of Hindu Law, published in Calcutta in 1796 (second edition?) with a preface by the oriental scholar, judge and ‘Justinian of India’, Sir William Jones, sold at £120; a signed presentation copy of A.F. Calvert’s My Fourth Tour in Western Australia, 1897, made £150, and Frederic Fischbach’s Textile Ornament of 1882, illustrated with 160 coloured plates, went for £200.
Fifty-three volumes of the New Naturalist series – comprising the first 52 volumes from the launch of this famous publication in 1946, plus one later volume of 1979, brought a bid of £850. All were in dust jackets, though some were defective.
Short’s Stygian Poison
Bearnes, Exeter, March 23 Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent UK: HIGHLIGHTS of this sale included Thomas Short’s Comparative History of the Increase and Decrease of Mankind in England... and also a Meteorological Discourse, 1767, which, in the process of assembling historical and medical information, advocates early marriage and denounces alcohol as ‘a Stygian poison’. It sold at £100.
