A set of Cook’s Voyages was a first edition one, complete with atlas and Kippis’ biography, but the bindings were a mix of styles and ages, about half of the plates in the atlas volumes showed stains and there was some need for internal repair and restoration – all of which restricted the bidding to $16,000 (£11,595).
Two collections of books, periodicals and pamphlets on the development of rocket science formed by Herbert Schaefer, a German scientist who emigrated to the USA in 1936 – one comprising some 300 items from the period 1914-52, the other a selection of 14 books and booklets, most inscribed to Schaefer, by Will Ley, a founder member of the German Rocket Society and fellow emigrant who worked as a scientific editor in America – sold at $20,000 (£14,490) and $1500 (£1085) respectively.
Sold at $11,000 (£7970) was one of 500 signed copies of Foujita’s A Book of Cats, rebound in quarter morocco and red cloth and with an extra loose suite of the 20 plates on Japanese vellum paper contained in a custom made chemise.
Secondhand copy of first hand first
AMONG the earlier travel books in the June 14 sale held by Pacific Book Auctions was a 1632 first edition of Bernal Diaz del Castillo’s famous first-hand account of the conquest of Mexico, Historia Verdadera de la Conquesta de la Nueva-España. An ex-Nottingham Free Library copy in a 20th century quarter morocco binding, it had stamps to the title and other pages and a few other shortcomings of condition, but it is an important work and sold at $5000 (£3625).
