44 19th March 2011 antiquarian books


Chapter and verse on early Bibles


THE first big Bible price of 2011 was recorded at Dominic Winter on March 2-3, where a copy of the 1611 editio princeps of the King James, or Authorised version (nicknamed ‘He’ for a misprint in the Book of Ruth) was sold at £27,000. Like so many of these early Bibles,


Above: ‘View of Lower Broad Street’ is one of the Six Views of Ludlow by Henry Bryan Ziegler that sold for £2600 at Bloomsbury Auctions on November 24. Described as an early example of mixed-method steel-plate engraving, enhanced by colour printing and finished by hand, this oblong folio collection in red morocco-backed cloth of the period, was printed locally by Procter & Jones in 1827. Bloomsbury reckon this example, formerly in the Boise Penrose collections and apparently sold at auction in New York in 1945, was the only copy to have come to auction in over 30 years. In 2008 Dominic Winter sold a copy in rubbed and frayed but original green card wrappers for just £280, but that was catalogued as an 1846, oblong quarto edition and the plates were uncoloured mezzotints.


On the other hand, an online search showed one dealer offering what appear to be these six original plates at £145 apiece – though they do not seem to share the vibrant colouring seen here.


Above right: published by Ackermann in 1810, the Reverend Joseph Wilkinson’s Select Views in Cumberland, Westmoreland and Lancashire is a folio collection of 48 hand-coloured, soft-ground etched plates. Seen here is ‘Dulmail raise, on the Ambleside Road’ and the caption tells us that “The heap of Stones in the foreground perpetuate the name and fall of the last King of Cumberland”. At Bloomsbury Auctions on November 19 (the Harris Collection), a handsome example in a rebacked period binding of red straight-grained morocco gilt sold for a record £2200.


British & Irish Book Auctions


Mar 16*@ Mar 16*@ Mar 16*@ Mar 16*


Mar 17*@ 14-lot Book Section, Abbotts - Campsea Ashe (01728 746323)


7-lot Book Section, Boldon Auction Galleries - East Boldon (0191 537 2630) 17-lot Book Section, Barry Hawkins - Downham Market (01366 387180) Book Section: Coin & Medal Sale, Dix Noonan Webb - London (020 7016 1700) 70-lot Book Section, Ewbank Clarke Gammon Wellers - Send (01483 223101)


Mar 17 @ Antiquarian & General Books, Ephemera, Thomson Roddick Medcalf - Carlisle (01228 528939) Mar 17*@ Mar 17*@ Mar 17*@ :Mar 17* Mar 17*@ Mar 18@* Mar 19*@ Mar 19*@ Mar 20*@ Mar 22@ Mar 22


120-lot Book & Bindings Section, Bamfords - Derby (01332 210000) 22-lot Book Section, George Kidner - Lymington (01590 670070)


17-lot Weapons & Country Sports Book Section, Southams - Bedford (01832 273565) Hunting Books Section, Shouler & Son - Melton Mowbray (01664 560181) Railway Books Section: Toy & Train Sale, Richardsons - Bourne (01778 422686) Book Section, Cotswold Auction Centre - Cirencester (01285 642420) Book Section, Railtons - Alnwick (01665 603567)


8-lot Book Section, Semleys - Shaftesbury (01747 855122) 7-lot Book Section, Paul Beighton - Rotherham (01709 700005)


Mar 22* Mar 22*@ Mar 23-24*@


Antiquarian & General Books & Ephemera, John Nicholson - Fernhurst (01428 653727) Antiquarian Books, Map & MSS, Historical Photos, Bonhams - Bond St (020 7468 8351) Book Section, Bonhams - Knowle (01564 776151)


Book Section,Wotton Auction Rooms - Wotton-under-Edge (01453 844733) 110-lot Book Section, Gorringes - Lewes (01273 472503)


Mar 24@ Food & Drink, Country Pursuits, Natural History, Bloomsbury Auctions - London (020 7495 9494) Mar 24*@ Mar 24*


66-lot Book Section, Wright Manley - Tarporley (01829 262150) Mar 24*@


Mar 24-25@ Mar 24-25*@ Mar 26*@ Mar 29


Mar 30@ Mar 30*@ Apr 1@


Apr 2-3*@


Antiquarian & General Book Section, Clifford Cross - Wisbech (01945 584200) Book Section, Adam Partridge - Congleton (01260 223675)


Antiquarian & General Books, Ephemera, Keys - Aylsham (01263 733195) 30-lot Book Section, Eastbourne Auction Rooms (01323 431444) 40-lot Book Section, Churchgate Auctions - Leicester (0116 287 4856) Papers & Portraits: Roy Davids Colln. Pt.II, Bonhams - Bond St (020 7468 8351) Antiquarian Books, Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood - Honiton (01404 510000) Books & Stamps, Brightwells - Leominster (01568 611122) Books, Maps & Ephemera,W.H.Peacock - Bedford (01234 266366)


Autographs, International Autograph Auctions - Heathrow (0115 845 1010)


Sales marked with an * are those in which books and ephemera form part of a larger sale. Sales marked @ are viewable on antiquestradegazette.com. Auctioneers are asked to send details of specialist book sales, as well as those sales that may contain significant book and ephemera sections, to: Ian McKay Tel: (01795) 890475 • Fax: (01795) 890014 • ianmckay1@btinternet.com


Continued from page 43 British maps


18. This was an archive of 90 or so documents from the years 1303-1700 that relate to the Town Lands, or open fields of Framlingham that belonged to the town of Diss on the Norfolk/Suffolk border. Later annals of Diss may include the


fact that for some years, in a long ago, pre-electronic age, it was the town in which ATG was literally pasted together and printed, but this extensive archive had as its background the open field system of medieval England, in which fields of several acres were divided into narrow strips and held by villagers from the Lord of the Manor. These tenancies eventually became


fragmented and land was often held by institutions or individuals who did not live in the village. The archive includes early deeds relating to these tenancies as well as documents concerning a long- running court action of the latter part of the 17th century in which one Thomas Mildmay and the town of Diss disputed ownership of what by then had become Diss Town Farm in Framlingham.


this copy was incomplete. A few early leaves and the Speed map were lacking, and there were a few repairs and other faults, but it had generally good margins and, though the spine was modern, the binding was basically an original one of blind-stamped reverse calf over wooden boards with brass fittings. Of 77 surviving copies of the 1535


Coverdale Bible recorded in a 1974 census, none is complete, but for the first edition of the whole Bible in English, imperfections can most definitely be overlooked. Preceded only by Wycliffe’s translation


of c.1382 and the sections translated by William Tyndale in the 1520s, this Bible was effectively commissioned by Thomas Cromwell, following Henry VIII’s split with Rome, though Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, had also been among those actively encouraging the production of an English Bible. The title-page designed by Hans Holbein the Younger shows Henry being presented with the bible by his bishops. For a long time it was assumed to have


been printed in Cologne or Marburg, but recently it has been suggested that it was printed for the merchant Jacob van Meteren by Martin van Keyser of Antwerp, for whom Coverdale is known to have been working in the 1530s. A copy in the Hesketh library lacked


BUYER’S PREMIUMS


Bloomsbury Auctions, London: 22% to £250,000, 12% thereafter Bonhams, Oxford: 20% to £250,000, 12% thereafter Sotheby’s, London: 25% to £25,000, 20% to £500,000, 12% thereafter Dominic Winter, South Cerney: 17.5% Keys, Aylsham: 15% Lawrences, Crewkerne: 19.5% Lyon & Turnbull, Edinburgh: 20% to £25,000, 20% thereafter Mullocks, Ludlow: 17%


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 sale.


72 text leaves in all, the folding map was present only in facsimile and some headlines and printed marginalia had been shaved or cropped, while other marginalia is obscured in the gutter. However, it contains facsimiles of all the missing pages and even variant titles (as it is not known which had priority) and a unique leaf of preliminary matter that is known only from the Holkham Hall copy, now in the British Library. It sold at £55,000 at Sotheby’s on


December 7. Sold for £3600 at Lyon & Turnbull


of Edinburgh of January 26 was a Bible printed in 1653 by John Field, Printer to Parliament, and bound in period black- panelled morocco, that is said to have belonged to Oliver Cromwell. An early 20th century note explains


that it was once in the library of the Earl of Hyndford at Mauldslie Castle and was sold as Cromwell’s Bible at a Glasgow auction of that library in the early 19th century.


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