38 11th February 2012 antiquarian books


Victoria unamused by unauthorised etchings


Left: Queen Victoria’s own etching of her eldest daughter, Princess Victoria, dated 15.8.1841.


19th century literature continued from page 37


manuscript sermons by the Christian Socialist, cleric and author of The Water Babies, Charles Kingsley. The sermons date from c.1842-72, when he held the curacy of Eversley Church in Hampshire. These sold at £12,000. At Bonhams Oxford on January


31, three-decker firsts of George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859) and The Mill on the Floss (1860) sold at £1600 and £1700 respectively. Both sets showed splitting hinges and edge knocks, but were overall fine and bright in the original orange cloth. The first of Thomas Hardy’s books to


bear his name as author was his third novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes. Around 500 copies of this three-decker were printed in 1873 and at Sotheby’s on December 15 an example of this rarity sold at £7500. The spines of the publisher’s green


cloth binding were creased and worn with some tears, as were other edges and covers. It had also been recased and given new endpapers, but still managed £7500. Two copies have made more. In 2010,


MORE art market than antiquarian books, but nonetheless offered as part of a Dominic Winter sale of November 25, was a group of six etchings produced by Queen Victoria – one of which, showing her first child and namesake, dated August 15, 1841, is seen above. Both Victoria and Albert had taken


up etching the previous year, under the guidance of the royal portrait painter, Sir George Hayter, and over the following decade the young queen is known to etched around 60 plates.


British & Irish Book Auctions


Feb 9*@ Feb 10*@ Feb 11*@ Feb 11*@ Feb 14*@ Feb 15*@ Feb 15*@ Feb 16


Feb 17*@ Feb 17*@


58-lot Book Section, Eastbourne Auction Rooms (01323 431444) 156-lot Cornish & other Books Section, Truro Auction Rooms (01209 822266) 30-lot Book & Binding Section, Chilcotts - Honiton (01404 47783)


42-lot Book Section: Great Exhibition Sale, Adam Partidge - Macclesfield (0845 835 0520) 14-lot Book Section, Canterbury Auction Galleries (01227 763337) Olympics Memorabilia, Sports Memorys - Coleshill (0121 684 8282) 23-lot Book Section, Peter Wilson - Nantwich (01270 623878) Books, Maps & Prints, Bonhams - Edinburgh (0131 2252266)


Football & Sporting Memorabilia, Sports Memorys - Coleshill (0121 684 8282) Book Section, Cotswold Auction Centre - Cirencester (01285 642420)


Feb 21@ Antiquarian & General Books, incl. C.S.Forester Archive, Toovey’s - Washington (01903 891955) Feb 22*@ 133-lot Horological Lib. of Charles Alix, Dreweatts/Bloomsbury - Newbury (01635 553553) Feb 22


Feb 23@ Feb 23@


Book, Card, Autograph & Ephemera sections, Trafford Books - Salford (0161 877 8818) Literature, MSS, Modern Firsts, Bloomsbury Auctions - London (020 7495 9494) Antiquarian & General Books, Thomson Roddick & Medcalf - Carlisle (01228 528939)


Feb 28@ Antiquarian & General Books, Original Artwork, etc., John Nicholson - Fernhurst (01428 653727) Feb 29@


Books, Maps & Prints, Cheffins - Cambridge (01223 213343)


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


Most were based on pictures in the


royal collections, but some reproduced each other’s own drawings. The plates were produced at Windsor Castle and proofs pulled there on a small press, but occasionally a local printer was employed. The royal couple intended their


etchings to be seen only by members of their immediate circle. Mr Brown, the local printer, was under strict instructions to return all plates and impressions to the castle, but even then


journalists were on the lookout for royal scoops with which to feed the gossip trade. In 1847, one Jasper Thomsett Judge


persuaded one of Brown’s employees to let him have 60 unauthorised prints for £5. He planned an exhibition in London and even got to work on a catalogue, but newspaper advertisements for the show alerted the court and Judge and his partner, William Strange, very quickly found themselves mired in lawsuits and injunctions. Neither exhibition nor catalogue came to pass. Complete sets are to be found at


Windsor and at the British Museum (presented by George V), and there are a some examples in the V&A, but very few are recorded in private hands. This group of six, dated 1831-45


and all of Victoria and Albert’s young children, sold at £6600.


BUYER’S PREMIUMS


Bloomsbury Auctions, London: 22% to £250,000, 12% thereafter Bonhams, London: 25% to £25,000, then 20% to £500,000, 12% thereafter PBA Galleries, San Francisco: 20% Christie’s & Sotheby’s, London: 25% to £25,000, then 20% to £500,000, 12% thereafter Dominic Winter, Sth Cerney: 17.5% Strides, Chichester: 15%


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.


an ex-Doheny copy, the bindings marked and repaired at the hinges, re-appeared at Sotheby’s to sell for £13,000, while in 2001, the copy in the wonderful Hardy library formed by Frederick B. Adams reached £17,000. That copy, too, had some shortcomings, with some gatherings coming loose, but it contained two much later letters in Hardy’s hand, one of them, dated 1913, discussing the modelling of the heroine on his first wife, Emma. Seen at PBA Galleries of San Francisco


on October 6 was a mixed state copy of an 1896 first of Jude the Obscure. The pages remain unopened and it retained a defective but rare example of the simple, typographic jacket. It sold at $6500 (£4215). Rebacked to preserve the original


backstrip and overall a little rubbed and faded, a copy of Cranford that sold for £650 at Bloomsbury Auctions in Godalming on December 8 does not quite top the auction price lists, but those few copies of the 1891 first of Mrs Gaskell’s much-loved book that have made similar sums all boasted luxury bindings – and the one that topped the list also contained a drawing inscribed by the book’s illustrator, Hugh Thomson. A copy of Dracula seen at Christie’s on


November 23 was from the presumed first printing, on thicker, uncoated wove paper, and probably a first issue, but it had been bound, without the advertisements, by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, in black morocco gilt with a top cover decoration of a gilt bat on a coffin lid. The well-known yellow and red lettered


cloth binding is usually preferred, but this copy was inscribed “Tom Stoker with Bram’s love 29 May 1897”, two days before the book reached the shops. It sold at £14,000.


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