Books and Works on Paper

Following on from last week’s 19th and 20th century literature round-up, this second selection focuses on earlier works sold in London and New York during the summer.

Our round-up of British and Irish book sales coming up from September 25-October 6, 2018.

Real rarities and record breakers are among items that feature in this first of a couple of reviews of more literary lots from the wealth of summer sales. Here the focus is principally on works of the last 200 years or so – and includes such diverse characters as Hugh the Heron and the Invisible Man.

Accounts of wars and skirmishes in the southern states of North America and Mexico were one notable feature of an August 23 sale held in San Francisco.

Our round-up of British and Irish book sales coming up from September 18-27, 2018.

Two lots offering heraldic manuscripts – one of them being of particular regional interest – produced the highest bids in a mixed sale of collectables and militaria held in Shrewsbury.

Known familiarly as the ‘Audley End Lydgate’, the mid-15th century vellum manuscript shown below is ‘The Fall of Princes’, a Middle English version by the poet John Lydgate of Laurent de Premierfait’s French translation of Boccaccio’s De Casibus virorum illustrium.

Our round-up of British and Irish book sales coming up from September 11-21, 2018.

Wide-ranging Lyell family archive brings high prices across the board in London.

In a worn but period calf binding, a 1697 first of John Evelyn’s Numismata. A Discourse of Medals… made £350 in the book section of a recent Cornish auction.

One of the harder titles in the New Naturalist series to find today is RJ Berry’s Natural History of Orkney.

A final selection from the extremely varied Christie’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) major summer sale ranges from the scientific works of such giants as Newton and Galileo to the first jigsaw puzzle.

On September 18-19 Sotheby’s will offer an American library on the history of computing formed by the late Erwin Tomash (1921-2012), a sale that runs to 944 lots in all but is divided into two sections.

Complete with 48 cards and rules sheet, and still in its original, if slightly fragile case with printed label, Panko, or Votes for Women… is a sort of ‘Rummy’- inspired card game pitching Suffragists against Anti-Suffragists.

Our round-up of British and Irish book sales coming up from September 4-15, 2018.

Fine or unusual bindings, ranging in date from the 15th century to very recent times indeed, are illustrated and briefly described here – all of them drawn from mid-summer UK auctions.

Briefly noted in ATG No 2353 was a copy of Through the Looking Glass sold for £30,000 at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9%) on July 10, where it was part of the eighth and latest sale of books from ‘The Library of an English Bibliophile’.

Briefly noted in ATG No 2353 was a copy of Through the Looking Glass sold for £30,000 at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9%) on July 10, where it was part of the eighth and latest sale of books from ‘The Library of an English Bibliophile’.

Our round-up of British and Irish book sales coming up from August 28-September 9, 2018.

In 1942, the annual ‘Shakespeare Lecture’ at the British Academy was delivered by CS Lewis and called 'Hamlet: the Prince or the Poem?'