One of the engraved plates by Grignion after Jan van Rymsdyk, Pieter Camper and the author, each accompanied by a leaf of text, that illustrate a 1761, second edition of William Smellie’s Sett of Anatomical Tables… of the Practice of Midwifery – £2600 at Forum Auctions.
It was an ex-library copy, complete with ink stamp to the title-page, and in a now faded and slightly worn later binding of morocco-backed cloth, but it sold at £2600, which would appear to be an auction record for this edition.
Four or five copies of the 1754 first edition have made higher prices, as one might expect, with $10,000 paid in 1998 for the example in the splendid Science & Medicine library of Haskell F Norman, dispersed in three auctions held by Christie’s New York in 1998.
One of the 34 stipple-engraved plates, all colour printed and hand finished – and as such the first dermatological work to be so presented – that illustrate an ex-library copy of Robert Willan’s On Cutaneous Diseases of 1808. In a defective but period binding, it sold online for £1500 at Forum Auctions.
In a striking and contemporary binding of crushed morocco gilt, this 1787 Oxford edition of The Book of Common Prayer was sold at £650 at Forum Auctions.
