Antiques Trade Gazette 29


prices is not all child’s play


Far left: ‘This little Pig cried “Wee! Wee! Wee!...’, one of Beatrix Potter’s original, 1890 set of watercolours to ‘This Pig Went to Market’, sold for £50,000 at Sotheby’s on July 10.


Left: one of a pair of ink and watercolour drawings on cream silk by Beatrix Potter sold by Dominic Winter for £14,500.


Left: at least three 1982 firsts of Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse – which had a limited print run and saw many copies sent to libraries – have been seen at auction of late. The most recent, offered by Sotheby’s on July 10, failed to sell on an estimate of £2000-3000, but in a June 8, Godalming sale held by Bloomsbury Auctions, the copy seen here sold at £1050 – falling just £50 short of the record set at Sotheby’s last December. Another was sold for £560 by Dominic Winter on June 21.


Below left: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s much-loved tale, Le Petit Prince, was first published in New York in 1943 – both in French and English. The copy of the former seen here, one of 260 signed copies, made $6000 (£3835) in a Bonhams New York sale of June 19, while the English edition shown below right, recently rebound in blue morocco with a multi-coloured onlaid figure of the hero on the cover, raised £5500 at Christie’s South Kensington on June 19.


Far left: the very fine copy of Beatrix Potter’s first illustrated book, A Happy Pair of 1890, sold for $25,000 (£16,045) by Sotheby’s New York.


Left: ‘...Plenty of Buns’ by Beatrix Potter, a watercolour sold for £45,000 at Sotheby’s.


some of those other copies made more and, in 1997, a less attractive example in the magnificent BP collection formed by Doris Frohnsdorrf reached $55,000 (then £33,550) at Christie’s East. In the Dominic Winter sale of June 21,


a virtually mint copy of the rare deluxe issue of The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck of 1908, complete with printed glassine wrapper and the best they had ever seen, was sold for £6800. Again we go back to the late 1990s to find the record holder – £10,000 at Sotheby’s – but the sum paid for the South Cerney copy has not otherwise been bettered at auction. Bid to £29,000 at Sotheby’s on July 10


was the dedication copy, in a now worn and scuffed but special presentation binding of full-brown morocco, of The Nursery Alice, inscribed by Lewis Carroll: ‘Marie van der Gucht, with the Author’s love, August 1889’ on the half-title. One of the exceptionally rare ‘pre-publication


issues’, it is printed in brown throughout. Marie, whose name is hidden as


the second letter of each line of the dedicatory verse, ‘A Nursery Darling’, was one of those little girls that so charmed Carroll and who, with her mother’s wavering consent, was treated to theatre and other outings. A cabinet card photograph of Marie tucked into


“At least 40 of the photographs, some taken by Barrie himself, are the only known prints recording key moments in the lives of the young Llewelyn Davies boys and the man who immortalised them as the ‘Lost Boys’ in Peter Pan”


the book is inscribed to her mother, ‘In feeble acknowledgement of the loan of a valuable jewel’. In the same Sotheby’s sale, a


collection of some 150 photographs of members of the Llewelyn Davies and du Maurier families and J.M. Barrie sold at £26,000. At least 40 of the photographs, some taken by Barrie himself, are the only known prints recording key moments in the lives of the young Llewelyn Davies boys and the man who immortalised them as the ‘Lost Boys’ in Peter Pan. The album was, in fact, dubbed


the ‘Lost Album’ from the archive documenting the real-life story of Peter Pan assembled by screenwriter Andrew Birkin – sold at Sotheby’s in 2004 in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital. Other highlights from the world of


children’s books and illustration are featured among the accompanying caption stories, but I must also find room


at this point for Harry Potter. Described by the saleroom as the


finest example they had ever handled, a mint first impression copy of the first of J.K. Rowling’s bestsellers, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, sold at Bloomsbury Auctions on May 15 for £17,000 – equalling a record they set in 2007 for any straightforward, uninscribed first. Among earlier children’s books seen


in recent times, the stand-out item is a first edition (second issue) of Kinder= und Haus=Märchen that was sold at $80,000 (£51,345) at Sotheby’s New York on June 15. ‘Grimms’ Fairy Tales’, as it is better


known in the English-speaking world, was never envisaged as a children’s book, but was intended to document oral traditions and German folk tales about


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