Books and Works on Paper

The binding is an early 20th century one, and the very last leaf has been supplied as an autograph facsimile, but on March 17 the 1578 first English edition of Rembert Dodoens’ A Nievve Herball, or Historie of Plants shown here was bid to £3000.

Lack of a dust jacket is not always crucial to a high price, as Erskine Childers’ much-loved The Riddle of the Sands of 1903 shows.

Talented amateur artist enjoyed riding excursions with the author to antiquarian sites

Publishers’ file copies of the first 199 issues of War Picture Library, pocket-sized and essentially pictorial publications of the years 1958-63, brought a bid of £3250 in a Comic Book Auctions (19% buyer’s premium) timed sale.

First published in the UK as a ‘Collins Crime Club’ title in 1970, an Agatha Christie novel brought a bid of £850 at Claydon Auctioneers (19.5% buyer’s premium).

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Sold online for a far higher than predicted £600 in Norfolk on February 11 was a calling card of William Marwood (1820-83), who for many years was an official hangman.

Offered as part of a sale at Taylors (24% buyer’s premium) of Montrose with an estimate of just £20-30 was a catalogue of the library at Fasque House, or Fasque Castle as it is also known.

A travel sale held by Bonhams (27.5/25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) offered the usual mix of books, pictures, prints and photographs – and to very good effect in doubling the high estimate total.

Bonhams holds faith with specialist travel and exploration auctions

Collection offered in London auction included Agatha Christie and other crime classics

John Faber’s mezzotint version of a portrait by John Vanderbank of Nicholas Saunderson (1682-1739), a celebrated blind scientist and mathematician, was bid to 10 times the high estimate in a Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) general clear-out sale.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions

Sold at $34,000 (£25,185) apiece, two very different lots headed the bidding in a New York sale of December 17.

A magnificent copy of Liber chronicarum, or ‘Nuremburg Chronicle’ as it is more familiarly known, made a record $350,000 (£265,150) at Bonhams New York.

Almost a hundred lots in a New York sale came from the extensive Dickens collections assembled over four decades by Martin Nason.

Published in Paris, a 1613 first edition of a pioneering American exploration work sold for $160,000 (£114,285) in Philadelphia.

At nearly 7ft high, a fine example of a four-sheet coloured lithograph of the Sutro Baths sold for $10,000 (£7355).

Though a Bösendorfer grand piano topped bidding at $42,500 (£31,250) in a January 16 sale, the main attractions for many came from a different source.