There were a good many children’s and illustrated books in the Surrey sale, including examples of the work of Rackham, Dulac, Pogany, etc., as well as a collection of pop-up books that sold in the £30-70 range, but Rupert Bear was the chappie who had the biggest impact.
There was a bid of £200 on More Adventures of Rupert, a copy of the second of the long run of Rupert annuals featuring Alfred Bestall’s illustrations that had been launched in the previous year, 1936, but even more of an attraction for serious Rupert fans were two of the four Monster Rupert books that were issued in the early 1930s.
Originally priced at half-a-crown, these short, thick volumes reprinted stories by his creator, Mary Tourtel, that had previously appeared in the Daily Express. A copy of the first Monster Rupert book of 1931, the pictorial boards a little chipped to the spine, brought a bid of £650, while that for 1933 sold at £500.
Sold at £380 was a 1936 first edition of Barbara Todd’s first book about the walking, talking scarecrow, Worzel Gummidge, or the Scarecrow of Scatterbrook Farm. The dust wrapper was tatty, but the book was signed twice – once simply as Barbara (for her mother) and again as Barbara Owen (her married name?) to the title.
The day’s top price of £9500 was seen for one of 525 sets of MacMillan’s 1937 ‘Sussex’ edition of the works of Rudyard Kipling, the 35 vols. printed on handmade paper and here bound in full tan morocco gilt, as well as being signed by Kipling to the limitation leaf.
Containing 68 engraved plates after Giambattista Natali, some double-page or folding, plus 36 leaves of engraved text within decorative borders, and still in the original binding of quarter calf and marbled boards, a 1768 Naples edition of Paolo Antonio Paoli’s Antichita di Pozzuoli..., was sold at £1650. The most important collection of 18th century views of Pozzuoli, this systematic record of the ruins was issued in very small numbers and at 15 Neapolitan ducats, was a relatively high priced collection for the time.
Illustrated with 60 engraved plates, an uncut large paper copy of Thomas Hope’s Household Furniture and Decoration...(in early cloth with the engraved title cut round and laid on the now darkened upper cover) was sold at £900, while a trade catalogue of bathroom and sanitary appliances and fittings issued c.1890(?) by Morrison, Ingram & Co. of Manchester, illustrated with numerous colour and black and white plates, made £600.
An 1809 first of William Godwin’s Essay on Sepulchres... containing an engraved frontispiece and uncut in the original boards, albeit with the backstrip renewed, was sold at £225.
Step’s Favourite Flowers of Garden & Greenhouse, the four vols. of 1896 containing 316 chromos, was lotted with “others of country interest” but could probably have managed the £500 bid on its own.
A 17-vol. collection of the ‘Road’ books and other topographical works by Charles Harper, all bound in half calf gilt, sold at £500.
One of 60 special sets of Major-General Sir F. Maurice’s two vol. History of the Scots Guards (1692-1914) of 1934 that were signed by Albert, Duke of York (the future George VI) made £250.
Concerning Pozzuoli, Kipling, Rupert Bear and Worzel Gummidge
SEVEN HUNDRED or so lots were offered in the September 23 sale held by John Nicholson of Fernhurst, and though there were some disappointments – notably the 1776 volume of The Scots Magazine that contained the first Scottish printing of America’s Declaration of Independence, valued at £5000-8000 – almost 80 per cent of lots, big and small, found buyers.
