62 23rd June 2012 antiquarian books antipodean journals and drawings


Right: a wombat is seen in a plate from the rare uncut and unpressed copy of David Collins’ An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales...., sold by ABA for Aus$30,000 (£19,015).


Far right: one of the 36 card-mounted albumen prints that make up Arthur Webb’s very rare, photographically illustrated History of Fiji of 1885. Sold for £4200 by Bonhams.


continued from page 61


14 maps, among them the first complete map of the Australian continent. On April 20, a set


in good period bindings in the Jacques Levy library made a much higher than predicted $50,000 (£31,000) at Sotheby’s New York. The Halliday set offered by ABA, in uniform French bindings of calf and marbled boards, sold on May 7 at Aus$30,000 (£19,015), but a third copy, seen at Sotheby’s London on May 9, was left unsold on an estimate of £12,000-18,000. Yet another notable success among the


Halliday lots in the ABA sale was provided by a copy of the first and only published volume of George Perry’s Arcana, or, The Museum of Natural History, a work originally issued in 21 monthly parts in the years 1810-11 and intended as a compilation of recent travel notes and related natural history discoveries. Perry is best known as a conchologist and the relevant sections of this work


British & Irish Book Auctions


Jun 20*@ Jun 20@ Jun 20*@


6-lots Beatrix Potter Firsts, Boningtons - Loughton (020 8508 4800)


Books, Maps, Photos, Railway Tickets, Dominic Winter - Sth Cerney (01285 860006) 55-lot Book Section, Ewbank Clarke Gammon Wellers - Send (01483 223101)


Jun 21@ Childrens/Illus. Books, Comics, Mod 1sts, Cinema, Dominic Winter - Sth Cerney (01285 860006) Jun 21@ Jun 21*@ Jun 21*@ Jun 21*@ Jun 21*


Jun 21*@ Jun 22*@ Jun 23@ Jun 23*@ Jun 25*@ Jun 26


Books from Invercauld Castle, Thomson Roddick & Medcalf - Carlisle (01228 528939) 56-lot Book Section, Anderson & Garland - Newcastle (0191 430 3000) Rupert Annuals Section, Charles Ross - Woburn (01525 290502) 15-lot Book Section, Tayler & Fletcher - Cheltenham (012451 821666) Book Section: Sporting Sale, Bonhams - Edinburgh (0131 240 0916) Book Section, Hansons - Etwall (01283 733988) Book Section, Plaistow Auctions (020 8500 5110) 660-lot Book Section, Taylors - Montrose (01674 672775) Tolkien Books Section, Tring Market Auctions (01442 826446) Book Section, Mallams - Abingdon (01235 462840)


Jun 27*@ 33-lot Book Section: Arms & Militaria Sale, Thomas Del Mar - London W14 (020 7602 4085) Jun 27-28*@ Jun 28@ Jun 28*@ Jun 28*


Books, Maps, MSS & Photographs, Bonhams - Oxford (01865 853640) Book Section, J.P.Humbert - Towcester (01327 359595)


Jun 28*@ Jun 28*


Jun 30*@


Jun 30-Jul 1* Jul 2*@ Jul 5@ Jul 5@ Jul 6*@


Historical Documents, Autographs & Ephemera, Mullock’s - Ludlow (01568 770803) 9-lot Book Section, Chorleys - Cheltenham (01452 344499) Book Section, Shouler & Son - Melton Mowbray (01664 560181) 11-lot Book Section, Wright Manley - Beeston Castle (01829 262150) Book Section, Brentwood Antiques Auctions (01277 224599) Book Section, Steven B.Bruce - Stratford-upon-Avon (07778 595952) Cricket & General Sports Auction, Knights - Leicester (01263 768488)


Football & Rugby League Sale, Football Sports Auctions- Hitchin (07588 594664) Bibliophile Sale, Bloomsbury Auctions - Godalming (020 7495 9494) Books, Maps & Prints, Cheffins - Cambridge (01223 213343) Book Section, W & H Peacock - Bedford (01234 266366)


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 • ianmckay1@btinternet.com


include shells of Australian or South Pacific interest, but in all around 20 Australian species of animals and birds are also illustrated and described, some of them for the first time. Complete with all published parts, this rare and tall octavo volume, containing 84 coloured engraved plates in all, sold at a treble-estimate and record Aus$42,000 (£26,620). In a previous report on this sort of


material, published last November in ATG No 2017, I noted the sale of a 12pp House of Commons publication containing copies of correspondence with “Certain Gentlemen” proposing a Swan River Settlement... in Western Australia. The report includes a coloured and


folding ‘Chart of the Swan River from a Survey by Captn. James Stirling, R.N. 1827’ on which are indicated lands


intended for settlers and other public use, among them an area of land granted to one T. Peel on condition that he lands 400 persons before November 1, 1829, along with the land granted to Stirling himself. At the time I cited it as as one of only


two copies seen at auction in 30 to 40 years, the last having made £1600 at Christie’s back in 1986, but unless that 2011 copy – sold by PBA Galleries of San Francisco for $12,000 (£7435) on July 14 – then went on a fast-track saleroom tour, it seems that it is not quite as scarce as I thought. Just a few weeks later another example of this first published chart of the Swan River prompted a bid of Aus$12,000 (then £7575) in an August sale held by Australian Book Auctions and on March 27 this year, Bonhams sold another for £7000. Bid to £80,000 in the previously


mentioned Sotheby’s London sale was an archive of letters, manuscripts and drawings relating to the travels of Philip Doyne Vigors in the 1850s. A military man, stationed in New


South Wales from 1849-58, Vigors came from a family with a pronounced scientific background – an uncle was one of the founders of the Zoological Society of London – and his own intellectual curiosity, combined with army duties that were rarely demanding, allowed him to pursue his interest in natural history and aboriginal cultures. During his years in Australia he wrote


extensively on his experiences and findings and assembled large collections of seeds, minerals, shells, animal specimens and cultural artefacts. One of the latter, a Kanak mask from


New Caledonia that Vigors acquired during an 1850 South Pacific voyage in the corvette Hannah, was sold last December for a much, much higher than expected €350,000 (£318,180) at Sotheby’s Paris. The mask was illustrated on p.41 of ATG No 2024. Vigors wrote a journal of his voyage


with a view to publication (now in the Turnbull Library in New Zealand) but his


publishing hopes were dashed when, in 1853, the Hannah’s captain published his own journal. In 1851, Vigors spent a month in the


New South Wales goldfields, where he kept another journal and made sketches, once again with the never fulfilled aim of publication. One rather later but unusual item


relating to the Pacific islands should also be mentioned. Illustrated with 36 photographs of scenery, buildings and the local populace, all mounted on card and with tipped-in descriptions of the subject matter, Arthur J. Webb’s The History of Fiji, published in Sydney in 1885, is a rare work indeed. It includes an appendix by a resident


barrister entitled ‘Fiji as a country for Europeans to settle in’ that provides trading statistics and notes on climate, but then rather disconcertingly warns that “...a person thinking of settling in Fiji must not expect to find an earthly paradise... amusements of any kind are scarce, and there are no local topics of interest”. The publisher’s binding of half morocco


on a copy seen at Bonhams on March 27 was broken and otherwise defective, but no other appears in auction records for the past 40 years. It sold at £4200.


BUYER’S PREMIUMS


Australian Book Auctions, Armadale: 16.5% Bloomsbury Auctions, London: 22% to £250,000, 12% thereafter Bonhams, London: 25% to £25,000, then 20% to £500,000, 12% thereafter Christie’s & Sotheby’s, New York: 25% to $50,000, 20% to $1m, 12% thereafter Sotheby’s, London: 25% to £25,000, 20% to £500,000, 12% thereafter


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.


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