Antiquarian Book News

Bloomsbury Ephemera, Book & Postcard Fair

The next Bloomsbury Ephemera, Book & Postcard Fair at the Royal National Hotel, London WC1 0DG, takes place this coming Sunday, 30th April. It also features the Pulp & Paperback Fair in the Ellis Suite. Our last collaboration was an enormous success and we expect this event to be just as popular! Come along for some treasure hunting, who knows what you will find amongst our dealers when browsing the aisles! We have over 70 dealers displaying a vast array of material, featuring some of the very best, unusual, hard to find, and competitively priced items in the country!

The fair opens from 9.30-3pm, admission is £1.50. Check the Exhibitors page on our website for the current list. For any other details, including any late availability phone Kim: 01707 872140 or check the website www.bloomsburyephemerafair.com

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Market Harborough Book Fair

will take place on Saturday May 6th at the congregational church centre, top of the high street, Market Harborough, Leicestershire, LE16 7JD. This popular twice yearly fair is fully booked again with around 30 book dealers and a couple of bookbinders. Books to cover all tastes and pockets will be available and also a large selection of maps prints and ephemera.

Dealers travel a long way to exhibit in this pretty market town and this year we have new dealers travelling from Yorkshire and Merseyside along with our normal selection of dealers from as far away as Northumberland, Bedfordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland and of course Leicestershire, to name but a few.

We have a varied selection of specialist dealers covering such diverse subjects as Childrens & Illustrated, Crime Fiction, Local interest, Antiquarian, Maps & prints, Military, Religious, Cookery, First editions, both modern & old and a thousand and one other subjects. Also book protection and repair supplies.

Open from 10am till 4pm and only £1.00 admission. Full hot & cold refreshment service all day, full disabled facilities and car parking nearby. The town centre site makes a great location for a day out in the centre of the UK. Further details & free downloadable tickets from www.pbfa.org or telephone 07718 536357

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Forum Auctions' May 24th Auction of Important Books and Manuscripts

The sale on the first day of Rare Books London fortnight at the Westbury Hotel comprises 230 lots. An opening salvo of exceptional incunabula includes the 1477-79 Utrecht printing of Columnis’ Historia destructionis Troiae, one of only 4 known books from the press of Gerardus de Leempt. This exceptional rarity is estimated at £30,000-40,000 (lot 1). A sammelband of 21 early printed works and contemporary manuscripts compiled by a German humanist, with 4 incunables (including the first woodcut-illustrated Aldine), 13 post-incunables and 4 manuscripts together in a contemporary binding with the title Modus versificando written on one of the two leather and metal clasps, is estimated at £40,000-60,000 (lot 5).

Two early bindings catch the eye in this mouth-watering sale: lot 12 is an English binding on a 1517 work by Pontanus and bears the coat-of-arms of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, estimate £4,000-6,000. Four lots later, over a 1527 Paris-printed Book of Hours, is a remarkable contemporary signed Cambridge binding by Nicolas Spierinck (with his characteristic ‘NS’ mark), estimate £1,000-1,500.

A small section of Economics packs a punch and is led by the two volumes of Quesnay’s highly influential work Physiocratie, 1768-67, (lot 48, estimate £10,000-15,000). This is followed by impressive lots by J.S. Mill and Alfred and Mary Paley Marshall’s Economics of Industry, 1879 – Marshall’s excessively rare first book, only one copy of which seems to have appeared at auction in the last 40 years (lot 50, estimate £2,000-3,000).

Another impressive assembly of manuscripts and letters includes a letter to Lord Paget signed by Queen Mary I and King Philip II (consort of Queen Mary, and King of Spain) – this finely preserved and highly important historical document carries an estimate of £18,000-20,000 (lot 58). A fine section of Heraldry (lots 80-100) includes a number of important and decorative grants of arms and pedigrees. There then follows an impressive private collection of 50 lots of Sir Francis Bacon and Baconiana, which includes The Essaies, one of three variant editions printed by Shakespeare’s printer Jaggard in 1613 (lot 105, estimate £1,000-1,500).

Other English Literature includes a presentation copy of Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark, inscribed to his Godson on the day of publication in 1876 (lot 164, estimate £2,500-3,500) and the following lot is Sylvia Pankhurst’s very scarce book of poems Writ on Cold Slate, written whilst in prison. Grouped with another suffragette work, the lot is estimated at £600-800.

In the Modern First Editions, Private Press and Illustrated Books section there are a number of Churchill firsts (lots 173-177) and several Graham Greene’s, including a jacketed The Confidential Agent, 1939 (lot 190, estimate £1,500-2,000).

The sale concludes with Science, Travel and Architecture where the first work on the safety razor – Peret’s La Pogonotomie, 1769 (lot 220, estimate £300-400) – sits near a fine set of first editions of Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus, 5 vol., 1715-71 (lot 224, estimate £8,000-12,000).

For full catalogue, viewing times and further information, please visit www.forumauctions.co.uk

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