Dated 1566, this was the earliest published map showing the whole of North America. It sold at Gloucestershire auction house Dominic Winter (20/24% buyer’s premium).
Both engraved and published by Forlani, it was the first map to display America as a separate continent and the first to show the Straits of Anian, now better known as the Bering Strait that separates Russia and North America. At the same time Forlani also published La Descrittione di tutto il Peru, thus completing his cartographic coverage of the Americas.
Down Under mapped
Among other cartographic attractions in South Cerney was an 1849 Map of the Purchased and Measured Lands, Counties, Parishes, etc. of the Melbourne & Geelong Districts that was engraved and published by Thomas Ham of Melbourne and sold by Edward Stamford.
Showing how the Melbourne and Geelong districts were divided and sold to settlers, it is known in only four institutional collections, and appears to have made no previous appearance at auction. It sold online at £3600.
Also of Australian appeal was a folding and coloured litho Chart of the Swan River, based on a survey undertaken by Captain James Sterling of the Royal Navy and ordered by the House of Commons to be printed by Hansard & Sons in 1829. Bound with copies of correspondence from the Colonial department, this was one of the first published charts of what is now Perth in Western Australia.
Land shown in yellow, the accompanying text reveals, “…is to be granted to Mr T Peel, on condition of his landing 400 Persons before the 1st November, 1829”. Two additional parcels, marked in red, were to be granted to Mr Sterling.
One of 10 aquatints from a copy of Humphry Repton’s 1794 Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening…, sold at £6500 by Dominic Winter. Much of the text was missing but the plates were complete with overslips.
Earlier printed works included a 1600 and first English edition of Livy’s Romane Historie…, a copy in contemporary calf gilt binding of what was the first of the “stately array of folio translations of the classics” produced by Philemon Holland. It sold at £6500.
Sold a little over the high estimate at £1400 was a 1749 first of something very different: The Governess: or, Little Female Academy. Being the History of Mrs Teachum, and her Nine Girls…
Regarded as the first novel in English specifically written for children, it was the creation of Sara Fielding, sister of the famed and pioneering English novelist, Henry Fielding.
August from Robert Furber’s Flora… of each Month of the Year c.1750 bound with Benjamin Wilkes’ Twelve New Designs of English Butterflies in a volume sold for £19,500 at Dominic Winter.
Austen expert
The late David Gilson (1936-2014) is known to all collectors of the works of Jane Austen for his exhaustive bibliography of her works, published in 1982.
A small selection of the collection he formed with his partner, Chris Viveash, was another attraction of the South Cerney sale.
Highlights included a three volume first of Mansfield Park, lacking half-titles and bound half calf in the late 19th century, which sold at £13,000.
Cards from a deck celebrating the Glorious Revolution sold for £8000 at Dominic Winter.
Playing cards from the Dudley Oliss were another of the day’s attractions and led at £8000 by a deck of late 17th or early 18th century cards featuring anti-Catholic propaganda in the manner of Francis Barlow.
Called Orange Cards, or The (Glorious) Revolution of 1688, they probably date, like other similar sets recorded, from the early 18th century with the lack of a tax stamp suggesting a date before 1711.
