Antiquarian Book News

Historic Letter from Mao to Clement Attlee: 

Calling for Urgent Assistance From the British Labour Party

To be offered at Sotheby’s in London, 15 December 2015

One of the first communications between the Communist party leader and any Western politician.
Only the second letter signed by Mao to appear on the international auction market in recent decades.

An historic letter written by Mao Zedong, the Communist Party leader and brilliant guerrilla commander who would become one of the most significant historical figures of the century, to the British politician Clement Attlee, then head of the Labour Party and the future British Prime Minister, will come to auction in London on 15 December 2015. Estimated at £100,000-150,000 / HK$ 1.2-1.8m, this is one of the very first communications between the Communist leader and any Western politician.

Dated 1 November 1937, the letter was written from Yan’an, a remote part of north-western China where the Communists had set-up their headquarters following the full-scale Japanese invasion of the country. After stating Mao’s solidarity and goodwill to the British people, the letter calls for the Labour Party's urgent practical assistance in the fight against Japanese Imperialism.

Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’s Specialist in Books and Manuscripts: “This attempt to elicit British support against Japan is an extraordinarily early instance of Mao engaging in international diplomacy, and is an exceptionally rare example of Mao’s signature. This is only the second document signed by Mao to appear on the international auction market in recent decades.”

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Treloar Auction

Rare Books, Photographs, Maps & Ephemera

Wednesday 9 December 2015
7pm (Australian Central Daylight Time)
196 North Tce, Adelaide, South Australia

Highlights include a fine complete set of Carl Strehlow's Die Aranda-und Loritja-Stämme (among other important Australian Aboriginal works, including original Spencer and Gillen photographs), a large oil painting of SY Aurora of Antarctic fame; W.J. Hooker's Journal of a Tour in Iceland with extraordinary provenance (J.D. Hooker, William Colenso and Douglas Mawson), a fine autograph letter from Alexander von Humboldt, and a superb signed photograph of cricketer George Giffen.

Particular strengths of the sale are exploration and travel, rare Australiana and vintage photographs, including photographically illustrated books.

Click here to view the illustrated catalogue

Go to www.treloars.com for full details

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The Book of Kells

Some fragments of a mediaeval manuscript hidden in the spine of a book for hundreds of years could shed new light on Ireland's greatest cultural treasure, The Book of Kells. The pieces, discovered in a German library, bear “remarkable similarities” to the Irish national icon and could even pre-date The Book of Kells.

The work is thought by scholars to have been produced on the island of Iona, in Gaelic Scotland, around AD 800, although conflicting views have suggested that its origins could lie in English Northumbria or in Pictland in eastern Scotland.

The ‘new’ manuscript fragments were found by a retired German professor who realised their significance and passed them to an eminent American palaeographer to try to establish their origin. He in turn sought the expert help of Professor David Dumville, a professor in history, palaeography, and Celtic at the University of Aberdeen, who assembled an international team of scholars in the Granite City to analyse scans of the fragments.

The Book of Kells contains the four Gospels in Latin and is written in a high grade of Insular script, originally developed in Britain and Ireland and which spread to continental Europe during the early Middle Ages

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