Estimated at £2000-3000 but sold for £12,500 at the Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) sale on October 11 was a first edition copy of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments. Edited by his widow Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, it was published in two volumes in 1840.
This is not a particularly rare book, but the first volume of this copy was inscribed F. Constancio, with the compts & remembrances [of] Mrs. Shelley. London 12 March 1842.
Francisco Solano Constancio (1777-1846), was a Portuguese physician, diplomat, philologist, economist, journalist and politician. He translated several major works of English political economy into French, including those by Mary Shelley’s father, William Godwin.
Kipling’s laws of the jungle
The Library Sale at Cheffins (24.5/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on October 12 included an inscribed copy of Rudyard Kipling’s most famous work The Jungle Book.
This was an 1896 reprint of the 1895 first edition and was in poor condition, with water damage to many of the pages and to the gilt and royal blue cloth.
However, to the title page the author had crossed out his name in type and replaced it with his own handwriting and added the verse: Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they; But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is - Obey!
Estimated at £300-500, it took £3400.
