Books and Works on Paper

As we approach the second anniversary of our inaugural 2016 auction, we are again delighted to be the sponsors of Antique Trade Gazette’s ‘Books, Maps & Prints’ supplement.

In a journey starting with the Great Fire and taking in the 1980s, dealer Tim Bryars explores the collecting market for London maps

Night after night in the summer of 1916, the artist and bookbinder Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (1840-1922) visited the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge under cover of darkness, each time laden down with a package wrapped in brown paper and string.

In the bicentenery year of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Gothic genre continues to capture the popular imagination, writes Kate Quill.

Gothic literature is perhaps most alive in the public imagination today through cinema, with horror films inspired by the classic Gothic stories going back to the earliest days of the medium.

The 'California International Antiquarian Book Fair' and the 'New York International Antiquarian Book Fair' give dealers the chance to access the US east coast and west coast markets within the first few months of the year.

A list of the events taking place at this year's 'Rare Books London'.

The photobook genre is almost as old as photography itself and can be collected at all price points, as Bonhams’ Matthew Haley reports.

A list of upcoming book fairs in the UK and overseas.

A volume containing Richard Hooker’s sixth and eighth books dealing with The Lawes of Ecclesiastical Policy… is a 1651 re-issue of an edition first published three years earlier. The principal attraction, however, was the armorial binding.

Published in 1895, Wright & Dixon’s Guide to American Golf… was one of the very first books on the game to appear in that country. A copy sold on April 12 in San Francisco for $42,500 (£29,930) was billed as “perhaps the only copy extant”.

First such pocket atlas published in England leads a look at highly diverse auction selection

Printed for circulation only among members of the imperial family and those foreign dignitaries who had participated in the celebrations, an album recording the 1883 coronation in Moscow of Tsar Alexander III and the Empress Marie Feodorovna sold for $30,000 (£21,125) in a US sale.

Bound in recent times as six volumes in elaborately gilt crushed scarlet morocco, a 1614-17 Prague first of a major commentary on the Mishnah by Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1579-1654), was a highlight of a recent New York sale of Judaica.

Sold for $300,000 (£214,185) apiece in a recent New York sale were three very well-known works from the worlds of cartography and natural history.

Brought into a free valuation day held at Bishop’s Cleve, near Cheltenham, a copy of Eric Ravilious’ High Street sold on March 27 at what would appear to be a record sum in a Derbyshire sale.

Running to 600 lots and achieving £560,000 hammer, a recent London sale incorporated a wide range of collecting fields, from Dickensian theatrical ephemera to children’s books and all things Irish.

Composed to mark the departure from these shores after two years of self-imposed exile in Ireland and England, a Farewell Song of Frederick Douglass, on Quitting England for America – the Land of his Birth was published in London in 1847.

Rather slimmer than he is seen in the later films that are perhaps his principal memorial, this ink self-portrait by the comedian, juggler and actor WC Fields dates from his earlier, vaudeville years.

Collection of more than 100 travel accounts is one highlight of a varied London auction.