Books and Works on Paper

Edinburgh auction offered 1592 book from first European press dedicated to such a typeface.

Top lot in a golfing sale at PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) was a 1927 first of Down the Fairway: The Golf Life and Play of Robert T Jones, Jr.

Two very different manuscript lots provided the high spots of a sale in Westport, Connecticut

Three of the lots noted here from a Chicago sale of books, manuscripts, pictures and prints sold at record sums – and the fourth brought a price that has only once been bettered.

Estimated at just $5000 or so but sold at $110,000 (£85,270) in an October 2-3 sale at Brunk Auctions (23% buyer’s premium) in Asheville, North Carolina, was an extensive archive of documents and letters relating to the career of Captain James N Sever.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Offered as part of a sale held in Bristol were two copies of 'The Merchants Avizo….', a work by a local man, John Browne.

With only eight of the 178 lots offered left on the shelves at the day’s end and a top lot in the six-figure bracket, a Doyle (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) online auction was certainly a success.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

The term ‘works on paper’ encompasses a diverse range of media from artist’s prints to posters, ephemera and documents. Pictured here, along with an array of books, is a section of items available to buy from dealers or bid for at auction.

Chaucer and Shakespeare, Darwin and Tolkien were among the big-name and more expensive lots sold as part of the Gerald and Barbara Weiner library at Hindman (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Chicago.

An 1859 first of Darwin’s seminal work shrugs off condition issues to be a best-seller

Estimated at £200-300 in a Kent sale, a military commission that bears the signature of King George III and is additionally signed and endorsed by William Pitt the Elder, Britain’s prime minister at the time of the Seven Years War, sold online instead for £7500.

Principal attraction in a Crewkerne book sale at Lawrences (25% buyers premium) was the Browning family archive that featured as Pick of the Week in ATG No 2459, but three other items from that 370 lot sale are noted here.

‘Miseries of Travelling’ is one of the 50 hand-coloured plates that make up an 1808 first edition of Thomas Rowlandson’s 'Miseries of Human Life' – in this instance “Unpacking up your clothes for a journey because your servant is a fool…”.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions. While care has been taken in compiling these previews, we strongly advise that you also check with the saleroom concerned in case of cancellations or postponements because of the latest Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions.

Two very different lots were bid to $22,000 (£17,325) each in a sale of printed and manuscript Americana held in New York.

A selection of children’s books and annuals offered recently by British Bespoke Auctions (22% buyer’s premium) included among the comics a great many bound volumes of Dandy, but the star turn was always going to be 'The New Adventures of Rupert' shown here.

One of two near identical artworks that Frank Frazetta made in 1970 for the dust jacket of a Doubleday re-issue of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars has sold in a Dallas auction for $1m (£781,250).

Richard Sheaf, 44, is a collector and daily blogger on British comics.