The title-page and ‘Patagonians’ frontispiece of John Byron’s 'A Voyage Round the World in HMS Dolphin' from a composite volume that also included an exceptionally rare work relating to the Gulf Stream. The lot sold for £17,000 at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood.
Bound by Rivière in full crimson morocco, the lot realised £23,000 in a December 7-8 sale held by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (23% buyer’s premium).
As well as the four volumes of reports of the special juries that made up the Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, this exceptional set also included the three-volume official Great Exhibition catalogue and a First Report of the Commissioners for the Exhibition…
Triple offering
Another lot that made considerably more than expected, at £17,000, brought together three works guided at £500-700. These were a 1767 second edition of Commodore John Byron’s A Voyage Round the World in HMS Dolphin bound in full calf, Bernard Penrose’s An Account of the Last Expedition to Port Egmont, in Falkland’s Islands in the year 1775 and William Gerard de Brahm’s The Atlantic Pilot of 1772.
That last-mentioned work was very much the big attraction.
Two of its maps feature Florida, and a third is a ‘Hydrographical Map of the Atlantic Ocean, Extending from the Southernmost part of North America to Europe’. They relate to a pioneering attempt by its author to examine the source and nature of the Gulf Stream.
In 2007, a copy of this rare Atlantic Pilot in the original wrappers made $65,000 at Christie’s New York.
The Devon sale’s top lot, at £365,000, was a very rare copy of the 1599-1600, second edition of Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations… that retained an exceptionally rare world map and was the subject of a report in ATG No 2523.
