Books & Periodicals

The only known copy of the world’s first telephone directory sold for $140,000 (£71,430) at Christie’s New York on June 17 as part of an $11m (£5.9m) sale of the Richard Green scientific library.

A HANDWRITTEN letter written by Albert Einstein in the year before he died giving his thoughts on religion drew spectacular bidding in London last week when it sold at £170,000 (plus premium) against an estimate of just £6000-8000.

READERS who watched the recent BBC drama Miss Austen Regrets will recall the scene in which a startled, bemused but not overly enthusiastic Jane is told by the Prince Regent’s librarian that his royal master is a great admirer and that she should feel quite at liberty to dedicate any new novel to the Prince.

SOMEWHERE on a shelf in a pub in the Midlands there may be five rare books that could throw a whole new light on the Brontë family.

A BATTERED old Bible in a strongbox with a woodcut pasted on the inside of the lid was sold with a boxed rosary for £6200 by auctioneer Paul Beighton of Thurcroft, near Rotherham on March 9. Behind it there was quite a story.

It was in 1908 that the American entrepreneur Charles Barnes convinced the British Columbia Development Association (BCDA), a London-based investment syndicate, to purchase 6000 acres of land to establish a farming community for British settlers next to the Thompson River.

The last privately owned copy of Magna Carta will remain in the USA after its $19m (£9.8m) purchase by billionaire David Rubenstein.

THE first book on swimming printed in England was Everard Digby’s De arte natandi of 1587.

PREVIOUSLY unpublished letters from the poet John Betjeman are to form part of the setting for a travelling display of early 20th century jewellery designer Helen Holmes at Bonhams.

What price one of the most important legal documents in the history of democracy? On December 10, Sotheby’s New York will offer for sale one of just 17 surviving 13th century copies of Magna Carta.

DUBLIN auctioneers James Adam have negotiated a €3.5m (£2.4m) sale of remarkable papers setting a record for a single transaction of documents relating to the 1916 Easter Rising.

In the same way that Americans hold any material relating to the Pilgrim Fathers in the highest esteem, so anything associated with Australia’s earliest European settlers carries a huge premium for its domestic market.

HERITAGE grants have helped the British Museum acquire the 15th century illuminated manuscript known as the Wardington Hours.

IT must be every trustee’s nightmare. You dispose of vanloads of unwanted books for what you think is a realistic £36,000, but then over a period of less than a year you see the pick of them then raise around £500,000 at auction.

SIR Harry Newton (1871-1951), whose library provided some of the finest things in a £730,000 book sale held by Duke’s of Dorchester on March 8, was an adherent of the old ‘Cabinet’ school of collecting – buying key works of literature and science.

FOR the third successive year, dealers from the UK’s two major antiquarian bookselling organisations, ABA and PBFA have combined forces at the Edinburgh Book Fair which this year takes place on March 23 and 24 in Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms.

LONDON-based specialist book auctioneers Bloomsbury Auctions enjoyed a successful inaugural sale in Rome on December 6 where a total of €801,000 (£545,000) was realised.

JOHN Taylor was the Sawrey joiner and wheelwright, whose wife and stout, elderly daughter, Agnes Anne, kept the village shop immortalised by Beatrix Potter in Ginger and Pickles. But the first Taylor to appear in one of her books was his son, young John, who was the model for the terrier carpenter John Joiner in The Roly Poly Pudding.

The Museum in Docklands have acquired a rare and significant archive of 18th century papers highlighting London’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.

MISSING Book Fairs, named after the fairs’ eponymous organiser, Chris Missing, are moving one of their six events from one stately home to another.