Books & Periodicals

RAYMOND CHANDLER’S Philip Marlowe first appeared in The Big Sleep of 1939, and the copy seen above right, in a slightly chipped and torn jacket, sold for $8000 (£5160) in Pt. II of the ‘Detective Fiction Library of Richard M.Lackritz’, sold by Christie’s New York on September 24, but Chandler was not the writer who enjoyed the greatest success.

Two copies of Alcoholics Anonymoussigned by the founder of movement, Bill Wilson, were among the more successful lots in an August 15 Pacific Book Auctions sale of ‘Books in all Fields’.

THEY LIKE a good sermon in this part of the world and in this September sale, a 1611 (seventh or eighth?) edition of the sermons of Henry Smith, a puritan divine who was known as “silver-tongued Smith”, and whose collected wisdom first appeared in print in 1592, sold at £320 (Humber) in a binding of contemporary calf gilt, while a 350pp manuscript collection of sermons, this time bound in 19th century calf, made £1100 (Lachman).

LONDON antiquarian books saleroom Bloomsbury Book Auctions are to sell a major library with no buyer’s premium – partially as a marketing exercise. Managing director Rupert Powell believes this is the first time since the premium was introduced in the 1970s that a British auction house has waived the levy.

The Norfolk auctioneers Keys got a lot of media exposure in March when they took a bid of £22,000 for a collection of letters, cards, etc, written by the late Diana, Princess of Wales, to a Mrs Pendrey, a long-term employee and friend from her Althorp days, but in this sale another small selection of letters, apparently from the same source, failed to sell against an estimate of £7500-10,000.

Sold for £180 as part of a Hamptons sale on August 1 was the handbill exhorting Englishmen! to take up arms against Napoleon, right.

A presentation set of The Writings of Mark Twain offered as part of the Sotheby’s New York sale of June 18, a 1903 ‘Hillcrest’ edition, lacked one of the 23 volumes and some of the spines and labels were darkened.

USA: The 200-lot literature section of a photograph sale held by Swanns on June 6 included a good run of the famous American publication, Camera Work, comprising Nos. 1 and 3-10 of the years 1903-05, plus the Steichen supplement of 1906.

Inherently rare – in occupied France you wouldn’t want to be caught with a copy – this flimsy sheet of propaganda issued by the maquis at the height of WWII comes up for sale at Dominic Winter Book Auctions in Swindon on August 28.

IN A July 15 Golfing Memorabilia sale held by Bonhams Chester (17.5/10% buyer's premium) a scarce copy of C.B. Clapcott’s The History of Handicapping, a 10pp booklet of c.1924, secured in cream card covers by now rusty staples, was sold at a ten-times-estimate £4000, and one of 500 limited edition copies of a 1935 book by Clapcott, Rules of the Ten Oldest Golf Clubs from 1754-1848, a near fine copy in glassine wrappers, reached £1350.

SIXTEEN letters in the hand of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, written in the years 1746-48, in the aftermath of Culloden, formed a key part of this manuscript sale at Bloomsbury Book Auctions (17.5/10% buyer's premium) on June 20.

A Chinese works of art sale held by Christie’s on June 18 included a set of S.W. Bushell’s Oriental Ceramic Art illustrated by Examples from the Collection of W.T. Walters, published in 10 volumes in 1897 and illustrated with 116 chromos by Louis Prang after J & J.C. Callowhill.

TOP LOT in this comparatively modest sale of Continental books and manuscripts at Sothebys on June 11, at £52,000 to a European dealer, was an autograph manuscript of one of Goethe’s more celebrated poems, Sehnsucht, (Longing) dated to c.1802-03.

It is believed that only two copies of Johann Simon Kerner’s Le Raisin, ses espèces et variétées… were completed, but then this German botanist did make it hard work for himself in choosing to illustrate it with original watercolours.

Medieval illuminated manuscripts are hardly two a penny but religious works such as bibles and books of hours are much more frequently encountered than secular ones.

Predating Shackleton’s famous experiments in polar printing by nearly 60 years, this is one of a group of six playbills printed in the Arctic in 1851-52, during the voyages of the Resolute and Intrepid in search of Sir John Franklin.

THE National Library of Ireland has acquired a sprawling collection of manuscripts by James Joyce, which remained hidden for nearly 60 years after being concealed from the Nazis.They include a total of some 700 pages in six notebooks, 16 drafts from Ulysses and typescripts and proofs of Finnegans Wake.

THE WILD IRISH GIRL was the novel that made the name of Miss Sydney Owenson, the daughter of a Shrewsbury merchant and mayor who later married Sir Thomas Charles Morgan, surgeon to her Dublin patrons, the Marquess and Lady Abercorn. A self-proclaimed national tale, it weaves Irish history, politics and mythology into a romantic tale but the author’s vision of a politically and religiously united Ireland remains a dream.

Painter Albin Burt’s customised copy of an otherwise standard textbook, a two-vol., 1817 edition of Stewart’s Elements of the Natural History of the Animal Kingdom, contains extensive manuscript additions and hundreds of original illustrations to add to the basic 12 engraved plates.

At the eleventh hour, manuscripts purporting to be undiscovered music and poems by “America’s first native-born composer” were withdrawn from ,b>Freeman’s of Philadelphia May 16 books and manuscripts sale. Why? Evidence had surfaced that the archive was a sophisticated forgery.