Inscribed by the author to Irene Hancock, it was accompanied by two unused but seemingly related postcards.
Another of the day’s bigger surprises was a bid of £2000 on an undated, small octavo volume in broken boards called Homan Turpin’s Brief Description of England and Wales.
The county maps it features, according to Yasha Beresiner’s British County Maps, comprise a 1773 re-issue of a pack of playing card maps originally issued in the previous century by Robert Mordern.
In Turpin’s later version, writes Beresiner, “…the suit marks were removed… making them effectively useless to the potential gambler, and each county had a detailed accompanying text, giving the county’s history, topography and other relevant information”.
A locally printed work of c.1816 titled A Short Treatise on the Use of Globes, for Mrs Ratchet’s School – Pt.II, bearing a Totnes imprint and still in the original wrappers, sold at £400.
It is to be hoped that those enrolled at her Academy for Young Ladies did at one time have access to the first part.
Kelmscott Press work
Featured on the sale's catalogue cover, a Kelmscott Press work of 1892, one of 300 copies of William Morris’ own A Dream of John Ball and a King’s Lesson in the original limp vellum, sold at £1550.
Showing a lean to the text block but complete with dust jacket and containing two letters exchanged by its author and the consignor, a 1972 first of Richard Adams’ Watership Down took £1300.
The stand-out successes in this sale, a first of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and a rare, early-19th century work of science fiction, The Mummy! by Jane Webb, featured in ATG No 2409.