In a modern binding of half morocco gilt, a copy of Thomas Johnson’s “much enlarged and amended” 1636 edition of Gerarde’s Herbal was sold for £1000 and a 1769, second and revised edition of Borlase’s Antiquities... of Cornwall, again in a modern half calf binding, reached £500.
An 1885 Government reprint of ...Two Sale Catalogues of Jewels and other Confiscated Property belonging to His Highness, the Maharajah Duleep Singh which were put up to auction and sold at Lahore in... 1850-51 was sold at £880.
A two-vol, 1898 first of Sven Hedin’s Through Asia, the pictorial green cloth gilt bindings, in good condition, sold at £300.
Other highlights included two albums of some 120 photographs taken by Captain G.H. Prior during world cruises undertaken by Lord and Lady Brassey on their yacht Sunbeam in the 1870s – one titled ‘Portsmouth to the Mediterranean’, the other documenting a passage between northern Australia and the Torres Straits to Sierra Leone. The albums made £1400.
Two studio-size photographs of Walt Disney, each signed and inscribed to Tudor Williams, c.1940, sold at £450.
Cornish Hobbit has few financial rivals
A 1937 FIRST edition of The Hobbit was always likely to be the big story in the April 14 books and collectables sale held by David Lay of Penzance. In a jacket with some chips and losses, notably towards the spine ends, and showing an ink correction to the mis-spelt version of Charles Dodgson’s name on the back flap, it duly sold at £10,500.
