Books and Works on Paper

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper sales

A week after Christie’s (27/22% buyer’s premium) sold a first edition of Wuthering Heights for a record £950,000 hammer (see ATG No 2751), the King Street auction house’s sale of Valuable Books and Manuscripts including Cartography set a new record for a UK various-owner book sale at £10m hammer.

A letter by Carl Linnaeus (1707-78), father of modern botany and taxonomy, has set an auction record in his native Sweden.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper sales

Not a first edition of the horror classic but the version printed five years later is also sought after

Thomas Annan’s famous book is now rated as ‘one of the finest photographic works of the 19th century’

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper sales

Raised in Miami Beach, Stephen Farber’s distinguished medical career took him to New York, St Louis, Ann Arbor, Charlottesville, and Toledo. And along the way, he bought books.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper sales

Rare atlases from the 17th to 19th centuries provided the top-sellers as an extensive library collection emerged from the estate of a descendant of one of Britain’s longest-serving Chancellors of the Exchequer.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper sales

Two personal letters written by William Wilberforce, the Hull-born anti-slavery campaigner and influential politician, were on offer at East Yorkshire saleroom Hawleys (22% buyer’s premium) on June 13.

A four-page letter written by Edward ‘Bill’ Wilson to a friend during the early days of the doomed British Antarctic Expedition sold for £19,000 at Fieldings (26% buyer’s premium) in Stourbridge.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper auctions

Bidders spot copy of 1631 Barker bible that contains jaw-dropping mistakes missed in proof-reading

Guided at £800-1200, a 10in (26cm) medieval ‘rotating’ or ‘register’ bookmark sold at £7000 at Semley Auctioneers (22% buyer’s premium) in Shaftesbury, Dorset on May 16.

Both the first and the first trade editions of A Room of One’s Own (1929) were among a collection of eight Virginia Woolf lots included in the April 16 Rare Books, Autographs, & Maps auction at Doyle (28% buyer’s premium) in New York.

An “exceedingly uncommon” signed and inscribed photograph of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) earned top-lot honours in an Autographs sale held at Swann.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper auctions

Book owner’s son realised the impact this landmark work would have