In the book section of a Sworders (23% buyer’s premium) auction of September 11 the copy of Wigs on the Green, a first impression of 1935 in pink textured cloth and good jacket, sold at £1700, while a copy of her second novel, Christmas Pudding of 1932, not in such good condition, made £500.
Both bore the bookplate of a Cecil GW Eve, but there was no sign of Mitford’s first novel, Highland Fling of 1931.
A letter or note in Oscar Wilde’s hand sold at £2400. Referring to a proposed magazine story, it includes the line “Do you really think a story in which a young east-end carpenter falls in love with a duke’s daughter would be dangerous?”.
Sold at £1850 was a signed presentation first of WG Grace’s Cricket of 1891 that bore the bookplates of cricket bat and book collectors Charles Pratt Green and AE Winder.
This copy had an extra 15 illustrations pasted in the margins next to the players featured in the chapter: ‘Cricketers I have met’, and loosely tipped-in was a letter of 1890 in which Grace asks the Rev HA James if he would kindly allow a chap called Woods to play for his county at Bristol against the Australians. “We are awfully short of bowlers or I would not as…“
