Results: Books, Maps & Manuscripts Sale, 23rd August

An interesting and varied Books, Maps and Manuscripts Sale at Tennants Auctioneers on 23^rd August saw strong bidding and an impressive 92% selling rate. The sale was led by Tolkien, with The Lord of the Rings Trilogy published by George Allen & Unwin selling for £6,500 (all figures exclude buyer’s premium). The trilogy comprised ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’, 1954 first edition, second impression, ‘The Two Towers’, 1954 first edition, first impression, and ‘The Return of the King’, 1955 first edition, first impression, first state. Selling at top estimate was a 1946 fourth impression copy of The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (sold for £5,000).

Attracting competitive bidding to sell for £6,500 was a group of four geological volumes, comprising John Philips’ Illustrations of the Geology of Yorkshire or a Description of the Strata and Organic Remains of the Yorkshire Coast… of 1829 and Illustrations of the Geology of Yorkshire…, Part II, The Mountain Limestone District of 1836, and Rev. William Buckland’s Reliquiae Diluvianae; or Observations on the Organic Remains Contained in Caves, Fissures and Diluvial Gravel, and on Other Geological Phenomena, Attesting the Action of a Universal Deluge of 1824, and On the Discover of Coprolites, or Fossil Faeces of 1829.

From further afield, a Map of Van Dieman’s Land (Tasmania) made by Surveyor General and Sole Commissioner of Crown Lands and published in 1839 sold well above estimate at £1,900, and a very interesting collection of Photographs of Africa taken in the early 20^th century sold for £1,400. The photographs were compiled by David Anderson, who was born in Glasgow, and comprised images of scenery, buildings, street scenes, colonial life, hunting, sporting endeavours and people both indigenous and European mainly in British Central Africa (Malawi), with a few taking in Dar-Es-Salam.

Also of note was an interesting and well-written account of a British Economic Mission to the Far East, 1930. In the form of a series of lengthy letters written by J.L. Edmondson, Secretary of the Federation of Calico Printers, it documented a trade mission to Japan and China by the government appointed Cotton Mission to develop British trade in these materials. The letters recount the voyages complete with numerous stops on route, and an endless round of social and business engagements from golf and meals with geishas to visiting mills and meetings with government officials. The lot sold for £650.

Selling well, too, was a photographic portrait postcard of Winston Churchill, signed by the sitter, which sold for £450.

The sale achieved a total hammer price of £66,930, with a 92% sold rate for the 145 lots.

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