Book

US: ILLUSTRATED right we have “three great old hardcover books about the early ‘movers and shakers’ of Hollywood’s Silent and Golden Years. Out of print since the years they were published...”

UK: ONE CHART was very creased and there was a stain on the frontispiece that penetrated to the title page and early leaves, but the copy of Bligh’s Narrative of the Mutiny on [the...] Bounty offered in Carlisle was a tightly bound copy of the 1790 first edition in a contemporary binding of quarter calf and marbled boards, and it sold at £3150.

UK: The Voyage of H.M.S Beagle is a summary of fauna discovered by Charles Darwin on his travels through the Southern Hemisphere from 1831-6, and became crucial to the formulation of his brutal creed: “survival of the fittest”.

The William Foyle Library Pt. II sale at Christie’s, London last week revealed a copy of one of the rarest of all blockbooks.

LAUNCHED this week on the internet Worldbookdealers.com is a new concept in buying rare books and has the backing of many of the world’s top antiquarian booksellers.

UK: Illustrated here is The People’s Rights, a copy of Winston Churchill’s 1910 book which has made two appearances at the Aylsham salerooms of G.A. Key in recent months – with very different results.

US Round-Up (February-March Pt.II) THE FIRST 350 lots of the February 15-16 sale held by Pacific Auction Galleries comprised books from the library of the Zamorano Club, a society of book lovers, founded in 1928, which takes its name from the first known printer in California, Augustin Vicente Zamorano, who set up a press in Monterey in 1834.

UK: PRINCIPAL FOCUS of attention at this auction was the range of private press, limited edition and other modern illustrated books on offer.

UK: THE Christie’s South Kensington sale of March 19 fielded no fewer than three copies of the book that was the main source of western knowledge of Japan in the 18th century, the two-volume History of Japan... written by Englebert Kaempfer.

UK: DESPITE the irritation of losing contact with a US telephone bidder on the way, the auctioneers managed to secure a bid of £3500 from Arden on the principal colour plate lot in the sale – a six volume, second series set of J-J.Linden’s Iconographie des Orchidées of 1895-1900, presenting 273 chromolitho plates.

UK: TOP LOT in this sale was a 1668 edition of Gervase Markham’s A Way to get Wealth, a ‘nonce’ collection, first issued in 1623, which incorporates half a dozen works by this important but prolific and commercially inventive writer on agriculture, who was not averse to putting different titles to what were essentially the same works or to re-issuing unsold copies of new books under new titles.

US: A ‘FINE & RARE’ sale held by Pacific Book Auctions on February 25 saw strong bidding for botanical plate collections, with a very rare first edition of Description des plantes nouvelles et peu connues, cultivés dans le jardin de J.M.Cels selling at $22,500 (£13,390).

UK: A contemporary reviewer described a multi-volume study of The American Woods by Romeyn Beck Hough as “one of the most marvellous and instructive books ever made”, but this accolade seems something of an understatement when one considers that this work and a spin-off (or should that be sawn-off) companion work on ...Commercial Woods were illustrated with actual specimens of over 300 species!