Thursday, July 19, 2012

Antiquarian book news from the UK from Ibookcollector



First edition of Narnia by C.S. Lewis to be auctioned

A young boy, Nicholas Hardie, was given a copy of C. S Lewis’s book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by the author himself in 1950 for Christmas. The then eight-year-old knew Lewis as an old man and referred to him as ‘Jack’. The inscription in the book reads: ‘Nicholas Hardie, with love from Jack Lewis’

Hardie, now a man of 66, he is putting the book up for auction. Valued at about £12,000, it is the only copy of the book ever to go on sale signed with the author’s nickname, which he only used with family and friends.

Mr Hardie was the son of Oxford don Colin Graham Hardie, one of C.S. Lewis’s best friends and fellow member of the exclusive ‘Inklings’ literary club.
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Thomson Roddick & Medcalf
Thursday 26 July
12.00 noon
Coleridge House, Shaddongate, Carlisle

This sale will feature Antiquarian, Collectable & General Books: to include part two of a collection on sporting guns & shooting, part one of a collection of art reference (the property of the late Rachel Moss of Moss Galleries) many multiple volume lots re. climbing, military, Scotland & Cumbria, architecture, clocks, Folio Society works, 1st editions, antiquarian including Scottish legal interest etc.

Also a few lots of ephemera, postage stamps, postcards etc. and two Victorian photographs of Crimean war veterans by Joseph Cundall.

300 lots in all.

Click here for the auction catalogue.
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From the British Library
The British Library and the Qatar Foundation have unveiled a project to digitise half a million pages of archive material.

The British Library and the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) have unveiled an ambitious partnership to transform people’s understanding of the history of the Middle East, and the region’s relationship with Britain and the rest of the world.
  • Partnership to digitise maps, photographs, manuscripts and letters
  • Project supports Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser’s and Qatar Foundation’s vision to place Qatar at the centre of Gulf history studies
  • Revealing the ‘forgotten history’ of British involvement in the Gulf region
  • Context and interpretation in both English and Arabic
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Christie's South Kensington
Throughout the summer Christie's King Street galleries will host an exhibition of 60 of the finest posters from the London Transport archives, to be sold at Christie's South Kensington in the Autumn.

The London Transport Museum Sale offers an unrivalled opportunity to acquire iconic Underground posters from the archives of London Transport Museum (LTM). The Museum manages one of the greatest poster collections in the world, thanks to the vision and legacy of one man: Frank Pick. When Pick became manager of the then failing Underground Electric Railway in the 1900s he initiated a modern, colourful, poster campaign which has been continued ever since.

From the beginning, the Underground commissioned the very best designers to promote everything from leisure trips and sporting fixtures to the reliability of the Tube itself. By the 1920s and 30s, the status of winning a commission with the Underground was such that the company had no problem in attracting cutting edge artists such as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Edward Bawden, Paul Nash, William Roberts and Edward Wadsworth, all of whom were keen to see their work displayed on what was termed, "the longest art gallery in the world".

Fortunately, London Transport (as the Underground became known from 1933) kept duplicate copies of most of the posters it produced, and it is from this collection of spares that the selection offered for sale is drawn. All funds raised from the auction will be held in trust by LTM for dedicated use in connection with future acquisition, conservation and restoration.

View the e-catalogue
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