Books and Works on Paper

Publisher tried to link book to the poet to boost sales but a revised version was issued instead

Accounts of youthful travels in Britain and on a Grand Tour contain often blunt assessments

Two very different lots helped Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) to boost its first major sale of the year.

The complete original artworks for two of Edward Ardizzone’s much-loved children’s books were sold for £30,000 apiece at Bonhams (27.5/25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium).

As ever, the most recent sale held by Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) contained a great many maps and atlases and shown below is one of the highlights.

Our regular listing of books and works on paper auctions the UK and Ireland.

‘Masterpieces’ from the celebrated collections of Dr Martin Schøyen offered at a recent Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) sale in London included some real rarities.

In ATG No 2427 we noted the sale at Sotheby’s on December 10, at a very much higher than expected £50,000, of a rare copy of the 1553 translation into ‘Scots English’ of Virgil’s Aeneid by Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

Extraordinarily high prices paid for the works of the Russian writer Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev were noted in ATG No 2425, and there were many more lots of interest in the sale held by Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) in which they were offered.

Bible suggests confusion over ‘he’ or ‘she’ may not be purely a modern-day phenomenon.

Two ‘Frost Fair’ broadsides printed at one of the many stalls set up on the Thames during a hard 18th century winter in which London’s river froze over were sold in a recent sale held by Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium).

Published anonymously in Boston in 1828, a copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s youthful first book, 'Fanshawe', sold for $38,000 (£28,790) at Bonhams New York (27.5/25/20/13.9%).

Fifty or so lots from the library of the Earls of Haddington that were offered as part of London sale included their fair share of exceptional lots.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

Pocket guide to pleasure stimulates in Staffs and saucy memoir excites bidders in Yorks.

This watercolour drawing by Charles Addams was one of the more successful lots in a December 10 Illustration Art sale held by Swann Galleries (25/20/10% buyer’s premium) in New York.

Among the more inspired catalogue cover illustrations featured in the end-of-year book auctions was one produced by Bonhams (27.5/25/20/13.9%) for a December 4 sale.

Among the very earliest printed works sold at auction at the end of last year was a beautifully illuminated Biblia Latina printed in August 1462, just seven years after the great Gutenberg Bible.

The fact that Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) regularly made use of a magnifying glass is noted by biographers and underlined by references found in his letters.