Books and Works on Paper

The concertina-cut novelty pictured here is one in which a painted roundel of a cottage pulls up to reveal a large mouse.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from March 12-23, 2019.

A very rare and inscribed example of CS Lewis’ first published work, a 1919 collection of verses previewed ATG No 2377, was sold recently in Oxford for £2800. Spirits in Bondage was part of the extensive book section of a January 30-31 sale at Mallams (23% buyer’s premium).

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from March 5-16, 2019.

A small group of lots in a recent Edinburgh sale were once part of the library of the late 5th Earl of Lovelace at Torridon House.

Two unusual and successful lots from a February 20 sale held by Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium) of Ipswich.

A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening… is the single volume that I have selected from a recent Gloucestershire auction in which job lots were very much in evidence and that acted as a sort of extra, clearing-the-decks sort of exercise in the saleroom’s calendar.

Sold for £900 by Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium) on February 19 was an elaborately bound example of Monsieur Gravelot’s Almanach Iconololgique… for the year 1771.

Illustrated with eight hand-coloured litho plates, each with moveable flaps, The Puppy’s Visit To His Friends was issued as one of EC Bennett’s moveable books, probably in the 1850s.

Late 18th-century works for children combine juvenile diversion with moral instruction.

Letters on the sails of the vessels seen on the title-page of Pedro de Syria’s Arte de la Verdadera Navegacion, published in Valencia in 1602, are a reminder that it was Columbus’ voyage in Spanish service just over a hundred years earlier that led to the ‘discovery’ of the Americas.

Catalogued as the most valuable Silver Age comic book by far, a copy of Issue No 15 of Amazing Fantasy, the 1962 comic that saw the first appearance of Spider-Man, sold for £14,500 in a January 25 sale held by Excalibur Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) of Amersham.

Richard P Feynman (1918-88), recognised as a genius in the field of mathematical physics and once described as ‘the most original mind of his generation’, was a star turn in a November 30 sale at Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium).

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from February 26-March 9, 2019.

Heritage begins mammoth dispersal of Otto Penzler’s holdings of detective fiction.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from February 19-March 3, 2019.

Two examples of a celebrated Declaration of Independence copy hit new highs a month apart.

Drawn from sales held in the last days of January in the UK and US, an artistic device of framing a view with trees in the foreground is demonstrated in the two plates reproduced below.

Shown below is a page from an 1897 Paris edition of Robert de Flers’ 'Ilsée, Princesse de Tripoli' in which the text is framed by 132 coloured litho illustrations, borders and other decorations by Alphonse Mucha.

As featured on the cover of ATG No 2377, more treasures associated with the ‘Tiger of Mysore’, Tipu Sultan, are scheduled for auction in March at the Antony Cribb sale.