Again backed on paper and exhibiting some marginal staining and fraying, this latter, which also showed touches of hand colouring, includes inset plans of six harbours, including Charleston and Port Royal.
Mention is made of Heather’s chart publishing business in Leadenhall street, the ‘Navigation Warehouse’, in Dombey and Son, and that leads me neatly onto first bookform editions of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities of 1859, bound in red morocco gilt, and Our Mutual Friend of 1865, catalogued as leather bound. These sold at £340, but undervalued at £20-30 was one of the Christmas Books, The Chimes; a Goblin Story of 1845, which in original gilt and blind blocked red cloth, now a little faded to the spine, brought a bid of £220.
An official illustrated ... Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the three volumes in scuffed but contemporary half morocco, made £620.
Rupert Toovey
Partridge Green, February 13
Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent
Navigation Warehouse
TWO maps of the Americas, as predicted, brought the highest bids in this Sussex sale at Rupert Toovey on 13 February. A copy of William Heather’s New General Chart of the West Indies... of 1809, backed on (contemporary) paper and with some light soiling and a few small tears to the blank margins, was sold at £900, while for Heather’s New Chart of the Coast of America from Philadelphia to the Gulf of Florida..., a corrected and improved edition of 1812, bidding rose to £1450.
