Antiquarian Book News

Pooh and Piglet up for sale

A drawing of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet by famed illustrator E. H. Shepard which has never been published could fetch £45,000 at auction when it goes under the hammer at Nate D. Sanders auction house in Los Angles, USA on 29 October. Shepard produced the water-colour and ink artwork of Pooh reaching up and Piglet appearing to jump off the ground in a 1932 note to Carter Brown, his agent at the time.

In the short handwritten letter, dated February 29, Shepard thanked Mr. Brown for his work, writing “I think you have done splendidly”. The single-page letter, written on headed notepaper, has been in private hands for decades.

Shepard, a wartime cartoonist, was first hired by author and Pooh creator A. A. Milne to illustrate his 1924 book of poems “When We Were Very Young”.  His ink drawings for Milne’s final poem “Vespers” show a boy in bed with a teddy bear lying on his back on the quilt. The boy in the sketch was Christopher Robin Milne, the author’s son, and the teddy was his own toy Edward, who went on to become the Winnie-the-Pooh.

Shepard illustrated all four volumes of Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories, as well as Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows.

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A Voyage of Discovery – recently discovered album containing one of the earliest known
sketches of Honolulu on sale at Bonhams.

An extraordinary album of sketches that includes the second earliest known (and the first detailed) panorama of Honolulu ever made is just one of several exceptional highlights in a Travel & Exploration auction to be held at Bonhams on 3rd November. Estimated at £40,000 - £60,000, the album is thought to have been sketched by a member of the crew aboard the HMS Imogen, which under the command of Captain Bruce, explored the islands of Hawaii between 1837 and 1840. Throughout the album, the unknown artist captures the dramatic landscape of Hawaii in breath-taking detail – from the visibly smouldering crater of the volcano at Kiruea to the thatched houses of the Chiefess Kapiolani at Karakakoa Bay.

The auction also offers a rare insight in to the frontiers and uncharted territories of central Australia. Estimated at £4,000-£6,000, the sketchbook of Francis Fredrick Hutton is an artistic record of the 1850 expedition along the Murray-Darling river basin, led by the then Governor of New South Wales, Sir Henry Fox Young. Although the expedition was focused on evaluating the landscape and its suitability for developing trade routes, Hutton also illustrates aspects of Aboriginal heritage including views of encampments and grave sites. The album also includes several portraits, possibly the most interesting being a full-length portrait of Nadbuck: a highly respected elder among the indigenous population who had acted as both a guide and interpreter for Sturt's expedition in 1844. A curious character, he featured prominently in Sturt's memoir of that expedition, eliciting various anecdotes about his roguish behaviour and puckish personality.

The auction also includes a section dedicated to the ephemera of the pioneering polar expeditions of the twentieth century including an arctic medal; a jug from the British Antarctic Expedition of 1901; a glass bottle from the Byrd Antarctic Expedition of 1928 and a collection of items relating to Herbert George Ponting: the first professional photographer and film-maker to accompany an expedition to the Antarctic.

For more information visit: http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/22811 or call 0207 393 3810.

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Unpublished RM Ballantyne Sketchbook to highlight October 31 Book Auction

London – Roseberys 31 October Art & Antique auction will feature a dedicated selection of rare and collectable books.

Highlighting the antique book section is a unique unpublished sketch book by Scottish author RM Ballantyne, 1825-94. Ballantyne was one of the most prevalent Victorian authors of juvenile literature. During his career he published over 100 books, his novel Coral Island being the most successful of his literary achievements.

Ballantyne commonly illustrated his own books and a rare unpublished original sketchbook is being offered in the auction. The sketchbook consists of 85 illustrated pages. The sketches are of various subject matters, mostly in pen, ink and wash, and include humorous sketches of his family and self-portraits which were used for his abandoned book about Salmon fishing in Norway and his published Freaks on the Fells. It is being offered on Saturday 31 October with an estimate of £1,500-2,000.

Also consigned are original copies of novels by RM Ballantyne, military and army lists, a Phillipps manuscript on 18th century Spain, some Catlin proof plates and the original log book of HMS Blenheim fighting the Russians in the Baltic, dated 1855-56.

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One Bible for the "sinners".

The “Sinners’ Bible” or “Wicked Bible” is expected to sell in the region of £15,000 at the auction at Bonhams, London. The rare  400-year-old Bible containing a typo in the Ten Commandments encourages people to have affairs. The unfortunate ‘typo’ means that the Seventh Commandment reads: “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

The book is one of just a handful of remaining copies which were printed by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the Royal printers, in 1631. The mistake was only discovered a year after 1,000 copies were printed, causing an uproar in conservative Anglican Britain.

It is unknown whether it was a genuine slip or whether it was a plot to sabotage Barker's reputation. The mistake led to Robert Barker's downfall. In 1635 he was imprisoned for racking up huge debts and died behind bars in 1645.

King Charles I was outraged that such a flagrant mistake had been made and ordered the books to be withdrawn and burnt, but a few survived. The king summoned the printers to the Star Chamber in Westminster and they were stripped of their printing licence and fined £300.

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…and one for the King

Jeffrey A. Miller, an assistant professor of English at the New Jersey school, acquainted himself with some of the 70 pages of a notebook that had belonged to Samuel Ward, a 17th-century biblical scholar whilst working in England. But it wasn’t until he returned home, and made a more thorough study of photographs he had taken of its pages, that he understood the discovery he had made.

The notebook held draft portions of the most enduring English translation of the Bible: the King James Version, which was published in 1611 and named for the newly ascended King James I. The draft was there for hundreds of years, but no one had realized exactly what it was.

Miller, who specialises in early modern literature, history and theology, had set out for Cambridge in hopes of learning more about Ward. The professor had agreed to write an essay on him for a book about the several dozen men the Church of England had grouped into “companies” charged with producing the King James Version. Miller went to Sidney Sussex College, within Cambridge University, whose archives contain many of Ward’s papers. The notebook had been catalogued in the 1980s as “a verse-by-verse biblical commentary” with “Greek word studies and some Hebrew notes.”

While very few drafts, and no complete drafts, of the King James Version have been found, Miller’s discovery is the first that can be attributed to a particular translator. Further study, he said, will shed light on the King James Version, but also the English language it helped shape.

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