Archives
Archive for August, 2008
The contents of the Café Royal, a favourite haunt of Oscar Wilde’s, will be dispersed among collectors, literati, and bibliophiles at the Bonhams sale on Tuesday 20 January 2009. Frequented by royalty, Hollywood, politicians and bohemia, The Café Royal has thrived on the glamour and scandal of its clientele for decades. The London Landmark has [...]
Ketterter Kunst’ s two-day sale in Hamburg held on the 18 - 19th November saw Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe achieve a fine price, and a Transsylvanus letter fetch €114,000. The evening auction alone achieved overall proceeds amounting to €550,000, which outstripped an estimated sales volume of €450,000.
Robert Ketterer, auctioneer and owner of Ketterer Kunst, [...]
And the Dylan Thomas prize goes to...Nam Le, the Vietnamese-born writer has been awarded the £60,000 Dylan Thomas prize for his first collection of short stories, the Boat. At the ceremony held on Monday 10 November in Swansea, the chairman of the judges, Peter Florence, hailed Le as a “winner worthy of Dylan Thomas.” "Nam [...]
The
American collector John Wolfson has named London’s Globe theatre as the sole
beneficiary of his remarkable 450-work collection, which includes
a copy of the first folio, the earliest collection of Shakespeare's plays and other editions of the folio. Of the 750 first folios that were published in 1623 – seven years after the
bard’s death - only about [...]
An intriguing book with a surprising literary twist called, ‘Can We Have Our Balls Back?’ suggests that Jane Austen wrote about the game of baseball 40 years before its official invention. The author, Julian Norridge claims that evidence of the game’s British origins were erased from history by the American sports magnate Albert Spalding: ‘Spalding [...]
As part of its ‘Natural History, Travel, Atlases sale’ on Thursday November 12, 2008, Sotheby’s offers up an original two-page manuscript detailing rigging plans for S.S. Discovery, the ship that Captain Robert Falcon Scott sailed to the Antarctic, which is expected to sell for £12,000-18,000.A little bit of historyIn 1899 the Dundee Shipbuilders Company successfully [...]
Ketterer Kunst proudly announces its upcoming international “Rare Books – Manuscripts – Autographs – Maps” sale in Hamburg on November 17th and 18th 2008. With every field of interest covered - incunabula, old prints, Arabian and Persian manuscripts, literature about travel and exploration, autographs, photographs and modern illustrated books – this substantial collection boasts both [...]
Skinner Inc, once again draws together a unique annual offering of Fine Books & Manuscripts to be auctioned on November 16th. The 450-lot collection is rich in diversity, offering rare intimate documents from each U.S. Presidents through to George H.W. Bush, a selection of Arctic exploration materials, maps and atlases, and natural history chronicles, including [...]
The British Library’s new Taking Liberties exhibition is an inspiring tour of Britain’s “1,000-year struggle for our freedoms and rights”, looking at historic struggles told through more than 200 “iconic” documents and objects. There is an eclectic mix of objects from some of the most famous, such as the 1215 Magna Carta, to the more personal [...]
Dominic Winter will hold a two-sale next week that offers a wide range of high-quality material including a fine set of Mathews' Birds of Australia (£7,000-10,000), and an extensive section of Maps & Prints.The Wednesday sale offers a particularly strong historical autographs section with good autographs by The Beatles, John Constable, an important Reginald Farrer [...]
“You’re better off buying old books than shares in a bank!” - Dutch antiques dealer Laurens Hesselink.The ‘Credit Crunch’ crisis, while certainly affecting many peoples’ mental health, wallets, and employment status, did not appear to affect sales at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair. Despite the growing international financial crisis, and the UK now facing an [...]
The British Library has acquired a major archive of the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, one of the most influential literary figures of post war Britian, for £500,000.The new Ted Hughes archive, which consists largely of manuscripts, notebooks and correspondence from his last and most successful years of his life, will be fully catalogued and [...]
The Swansea birth house of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas opened its “letting” gates to the public yesterday, to coincide with what would have been the poet’s 94th birthday. Swansea tourism expert Geoff Haden and his wife Annie have spent the past three years restoring the poet’s home to the state it would have been [...]
Doyle Auction House in New York is holding a sale on 3rd November of autographs, rare books and photographs with some very varied lots. Never mind the credit crunch, this auction is perfect for pre-Christmas purchases.A complete set of five first edition Christmas books by Dickens is rather appropriate, including of course, ‘A Christmas Carol’ [...]
