A letter addressed in 1929 by Winston Churchill to a former Assistant Private Secretary, Eric Crankshaw, congratulating “Crankie” on his successful operation of the Government Hospitality Fund was sold at £875 (De Freitas), and a group of 21 albums kept by Crankshaw during his 20 year tenure of that office, containing a wealth of ephemera, letters, etc., relating to the great and the good – specifically Christmas cards from Winston and Clemmie and, on a more formal footing, one sent by the Sultan of Zanzibar – was sold at £2200 (Wyatt).
The upper cover of the contemporary panelled calf binding of a copy of John Donne’s Biathanatos: A Declaration of the Paradoxe or Thesis that Selfe-homicide is not so Naturally Sinne was detached, but it was a 1644 first edition (sporting a bookplate designed by Eric Gill) and in company with a 1669(?) edition of Donne’s Poems, and one other imperfect 17th century volume, brought £560 (David).
Uncut in the original green cloth and glassine wrappers, a 1948, large paper, limited edition first of Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One – one of 250 copies signed by both the author and illustrator [Stuart Boyle] – was lotted with half a dozen other editions, among them first trade and first US editions, to sell for £400 (Lenygon).
A collection of 82 items issued by the Tragara Press from 1970-1999, mostly hand-set limited editions in the original wrappers, sold at £1550.
A collection of around 90 late 19th and early 20th century music hall programmes – some with attractive chromolitho covers – sold at £1100.
Strides, Chichester, June 5
Buyer’s Premium: 15 per cent
Confederate collection of the captain of the Calypso
UK: A COLLECTION of carte-de-visite photographs and signatures of leading figures of the Confederacy – the South’s leader, Jefferson Davis, and military leaders, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, among them – assembled by a Captain Busby of the Calypso, an English blockade runner, was one of more competitively contested lots in this Sussex sale. The collection was finally knocked down at £3000 to Julian Browning.
