46 29th May 2010
antiquarian books
Shedding new light on the
■ Discovery and destruction go hand in hand in darkest Africa
Ian McKay
reports
CHOICE condition and rarity were the keys to overall success and some record- breaking results for an exceptional, 77-lot African travel and big game hunting collection sold by Dominic Winteron May 12. A couple of related items from a May sale
held by Bloomsbury Auctions
and older works from a library sold earlier this year by Heritage of Dallas complete this week’s all-Africa review.
Though much, much smaller in scale, the private collection seen at South Cerney contained some of the best books in this field seen at auction since the dispersal of the great African libraries of Humphrey Winterton (Sotheby’s, 2003) and Quentin Keynes (Christie’s, 2004). Many of the books were also in quite beautiful condition, and auction records resulted. Collectors, and one in particular who I shall refer to as Buyer-A, were very much to the fore in bidding but there were trade successes as well.
The books fell into two broad categories, those concerned primarily with hunting and the continent’s wildlife, and those whose focus was exploration – though there was inevitably some overlap. Some of the big guns of exploration
were, of course, present. Bid to £8000 (Buyer-A) in the Gloucestershire sale was a
signed,1857 first in original cloth of
Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa.
It was in a Bloomsbury sale of May 6-7 that a fine 1872 first in pictorial cloth of
Stanley’s How I Found Livingstonesold for
£1500, a record for a straightforward, uninscribed copy, but there were four good Stanleys in the South Cerney sale. In date order only, an 1874, second
edition of Coomassie and Magdala: ...Two British Campaigns in Africa, went to
Shapero at £980 – a record for any edition – and a lovely, two-vol., 1878 first
of Through the Dark Continent...was bid
to £2100 by a collector. The only copy of the latter to have made more was one inscribed to a dedicatee that reached £2400 as part of the Keynes library. A very fine example of The Congo and
the Founding of its Free State, two vols.
1885, did set a record at £1600 to Allsworth Rare Books, and an 1890 first of Stanley’s In Darkest Africa, containing a tipped-in note in which the author declines an invitation, was a private purchase at £1100.
Another item enhanced by the addition of a note in the writer’s hand
Left: How I Crossed Africa..., seen here as a first American edition of 1881, was translated by Alfred Elwes from the Portuguese of Major Serpa Pinto, whose East-West crossing of southern Africa in 1877-79 saw him awarded the RGS Founder’s Medal for his travels through “five hundred miles of new country”. With several maps and numerous wood-engraved illustrations, this good copy sold for a record £1600.
Above: dogs being chased through a makeshift studio are seen in ‘Photography under Difficulties’, a wood-engraved illustration from a two-vol., 1868 first of the Travels in the Interior of South Africa of James Chapman, who spent 15 years hunting and trading and made journeys across Africa from Natal to Walvis Bay, as well as visits to Lake Ngami and Victoria Falls. A bright copy in original dark green cloth, it made an auction record £1600 at Dominic Winter’s May sale.
Left: bid to a ten-times-estimate £2500, one of the biggest successes at Dominic Winter, was Edward Mohr’s To the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi... This English language first of 1876 is illustrated with portrait frontispiece, folding map, four chromolitho and 11 wood-engraved plates. A copy in later cloth made £250 at Bloomsbury on May 6-7 and Dominic Winter have twice sold a copy in recent half morocco (at £280 in 2003 and for £340 in 2007) but otherwise you have to go back over 20 years to find another example of this scarce work – let alone one as good as this.
was an 1864, second edition of Speke’s
Journal of the Discovery of the Source of
the Nile. Containing an undated letter in which he regrets he will be late for an appointment, it sold at £1500 (Buyer-A). Record bids were also seen for an 1835, two-vol. first of Andrew
Steedmann’s Wanderings and Adventures in the Interior of Southern Africa, which
went to Peter Kay at £1350, and for an excellent two-vol., 1866 first of Samuel
White Baker’s The Albert N’Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, and Exploration of the
Nile Sources, at £860 – though an inscribed presentation copy of the latter did sell for £1200 as part of the Keynes library. Yet another record breaker was an 1897 first of A. Donaldson Smith’s
Through Unknown African Countries. The first expedition from Somaliland to Lake
Lamu, which went to Kay at £1150. In a March sale held by Cheffins of Cambridge, an 1844 first in full green calf
of Charles Johnston’s Travels in Southern
Abyssiniamade £950, a price bettered only by the Winterton copy, which was in original cloth and made £1400. English translations of German accounts of African travels also featured strongly in the Dominic Winter sale. The fine copy of Edward Mohr’s To the
Victoria Falls of the
Zambesi...that sold
for £2500 to a collector, is illustrated and described above, but bid to a record £1450 (Kay) was a fine, three-vol. set of
Wilhelm Junker’s Travels in Africa (1890-
92). The latter deals with Junker’s travels from Alexandria down the Nile to Khartoum, around southern Sudan and to Lake Albert in the 1870s and ’80s. Lieut. Ludwig von Hohnel’s Discovery
of Lakes Rudolph and Stefanie...., which
in its 1894 English edition sold at £1150 (Buyer-A), is one of those works which combines travel and sport, being an account of Count Samuel Tekkei’s 1887- 88 exploring and hunting expedition. An 1880 first of Charles L. Norris-
Newman’s In Zululand with the British throughout the War of 1879, sold at a
record £1000 to an internet bidder, but one book for which I could find no previous track record was Alone among
BUYER’S PREMIUMS
Bloomsbury Auctions, London:
22% to £150,000, 12% thereafter
Cheffins, Cambridge: 17.5%
Christie’s/Sotheby’s: 25% to £25,000, then 20% to £500,000, 12% thereafter
Doyles, New York: 25% to $50,000,
then 20% to $1m, 12% thereafter
Heritage, Dallas: 19.5% Dominic Winter, Sth Cerney: 17.5%
NB: premiums may not apply or have been set at different levels where prices from sales of previous years are quoted. Exchange rates are those in effect on the day of the sale
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