Bloomsbury Auctions

2010-05-24

Important Books and Manuscripts

Bloomsbury Auctions’ sale of Important Books and Manuscripts in London on 27th May includes some gems that will undoubtedly set pulses racing internationally. The 753 lot sale encompasses substantial private collections ranging from botany, ornithology and garden and domestic design to English literature, history and political philosophy. ‘We’re delighted to offer such a wide variety of top quality books and manuscripts all of which are fresh to the market,’ said Rupert Powell, Deputy Chairman of Bloomsbury. ‘The market seems to be stabilising and once again buyers are hunting for cornerstone items, and we are offering them!’

The sale boasts several important private libraries from the magnificent botanical books of Mike Walpole in Leicestershire to the Library of Crowe Hall, the Regency mansion just outside the centre of Bath. The vendors of both were keen that the libraries should be put in the hands of a specialist book auctioneers, and Bloomsbury, as the auction house which sells more books and works on paper than any other auctioneers in the world, was delighted to be of assistance. The Library of Crowe Hall was built up by three generations of Barratts and the collection reflects their remarkably eclectic interests from architecture, garden design and furniture to travel, literature and natural history.

A small but very interesting private collection is the group of works relating to socialism. A first edition of A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollestonecraft (lot 614) explores the dynamic between men and women and how equality is the right of all women but is repressed through lack of education. Published in 1792 this is expected to fetch £1500-2000. The same collection also includes eleven items by William Morris and a family archive. Morris was not only a renowned designer but also an author and visionary socialist and the sale includes partially unpublished autograph letters, pamphlets and post cards. An exceptionally interesting group of letters written between February 1886 and March 1895 (lot 622) which comprises 18 autograph letters on Morris’s political work, showing his standpoint on parliamentary activities from the Socialist League point of view, he writes: ‘My position to Parliament and the dealings of Socialists with it, I will now [try] to state clearly. I believe that the Socialists will certainly send members to Parliament when they are strong enough to do so: in itself I see no harm in that, so long as it is understood that they go there as rebels, and not as members of the governing body prepared by passing palliative measures to keep 'Society' alive.’ As far as his relationship with George Bernard Shaw and the Fabians is concerned, he writes: ‘The attitude of Shaw also and his Fabians is rather difficult to get over: they are distinctly pushing forward that very useful association of lecturers as the only sound socialist body in the country: which I think is nonsense...’ (estimate £6000-8000).

Another privately owned and fresh to the market ‘socialist’ item in the sale, must be the very apex of radical thinking, Das Kapital by Karl Marx (lot 606). This is the first volume of Marx’s magnum opus, and the only one to be published in his life time, the other two were published posthumously under the editorship of Friedrich Engels. Such pre eminent works signed or inscribed by Marx are incredibly rare and no comparable titles have appeared at auction for 25 years. This excellent association copy to be sold at Bloomsbury Auctions is dated London, 18 Sept 1867 and is inscribed To Professor E Beesly his friend the historian, positivist and founding editor of the Fortnightly Review. This highly important work is estimated £25,000-35,000.

One of the focal points of the sale will undoubtedly be the legendary long-lost ‘Wasp in a Wig’ letter from the illustrator John Tenniel to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carrroll) dated June 1, 1870 with an original ink sketch on the first page (lot 646). The letter, in which Sir John Tenniel discusses revision of an illustration for Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, and proposes the omission of the ‘Wasp’ episode from the book, was reproduced in the late 19th century in facsimile by Dodgson's nephew Stuart Dodgson Collingwood in The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898), but the original document has been lost for more than a century.

Known as the famous ‘Wasp in a Wig’ letter, Bloomsbury Auctions is now offering it for sale for the first time and it carries an estimate of £15,000-20,000. Despite the fact that Dodgson and Tenniel are immortally linked in literary history, their relationship was prickly and difficult. Tenniel found the Rev. Dodgson so pedantic and overbearing in his overseeing of the illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, that he tried to avoid illustrating its sequel. After the publication of Through the Looking Glass, Tenniel turned down later proposals from Dodgson claiming that he had entirely abandoned book illustration. However Tenniel himself was not always easy-going; it was at his insistence that the first printing of Alice was suppressed, because he felt that the illustrations had been printed too faintly, and he was apparently hostile to the ‘Wasp’ passage. In the letter for sale, Tenniel has made a rough but clear sketch of the nightmarish railway-carriage episode from Chapter Three in which Alice is depicted seated across from a goat and a man dressed in white paper, while a station guard peers at her through opera glasses from the carriage window. In the first paragraph of the letter, Tenniel suggests that: ‘In the Railway scene you might very well make Alice lay hold of the goat’s beard as being the object nearest to her hand –instead of the old lady’s hair. The jerk would actually throw them together.’ The illustrator’s proposal was clearly successful, as there is no old lady either in the published text, nor in the illustration. Tenniel goes on to say, ‘Don't think me brutal, but I am bound to say that the 'wasp' chapter does not interest me in the least, & [that (crossed out)] I can't see my way to a picture. If you want to shorten the book, I can't help thinking- with all submission- that there is your opportunity.’ Once again Tenniel got his way and the peevish wasp disappeared for more than a century.

This privately owned letter is important for several reasons: firstly it seems that little or none of the working correspondence between Dodgson and Tenniel has survived, so this note gives a unique glimpse into the process of developing and perfecting the Alice books; secondly a number of Tenniel sketches have been preserved, but this may well be the only spontaneous drawing of its type. Thanks to Collingwood, the text of the letter and the drawing have been known since 1898, but this small sheet of paper is the irreplaceable original.

Dating from the same period is the best copy of Dracula by Bram Stocker that Bloomsbury Auctions has ever seen. Lot 653 is a first edition, a scarce first issue copy inscribed ‘To Mrs WS Gilbert with Bram Stocker’s very warm regards, 12/7/97’. Mrs WS Gilbert was the wife of William Schwenck Gilbert, of Gilbert & Sullivan fame and a friend of Stocker. At the time there was some mild controversy over the friendship that existed between Gilbert and Stocker’s young wife Florence, as they often socialised and the former was regarded as something of a ‘decadent’. This ‘wonderful, completely unsophisticated’ copy is estimated £7500-10,000. Another interesting, privately owned item is Rondels and Songs a miniature notebook of unpublished homoerotic verse by Aleister Crowley (lot 654). Crowley was a bisexual hedonist and social critic who was not only known as ‘The Great Beast’, but also as ‘the wickedest man in the world’, both epithets he revelled in. This tiny autograph manuscript dated 1898 is expected to fetch £6000-8000.

Bloomsbury’s Important Books and Manuscripts sale will be held at their Mayfair premises on 27th May at Bloomsbury House, 24 Maddox Street, London W1S 1PP.

2010-05-24

The Photographs Sale - Session I

The first three centre Photographs sale spanning three countries and three time zones was launched by Bloomsbury Auctions on 19th May; it was an innovative gamble which proved to be a resounding success. London kicked off and Rome and New York followed on seamlessly. The sales were well catalogued and the estimates were reasonable.

Bidding in London was generally brisk and 19th century photography fared particularly well. The Alpine Views of Switzerland by Adolphe Braun of 1865 (lot 6) sold for £3660 well over double the high estimate, while The Dream by Julia Margaret Cameron of 1869 made £1708 over double the lower estimate (lot 12). All things Russian continue to attract attention and the archive of photographic studio portraits of the Russian royal family taken between 1860-1900 fetched £6710 (lot 13). One of the highlights of the sale was lot 27 which comprised 52 albumen prints, Vistas Monumentos Y Tipos De Lima by Eugenio Courret circa 1870 which eventually sold for £15860 (estimated £10000-15000) and Edouard Baldus’ Vues de Paris en Photographie of 1860 made £9760 just over the lower estimate (lot 28).

Amongst the later photographs, Che Guevara’s appeal has not waned and the head and shoulders portrait by Osvaldo Salas (lot 93) of the charismatic revolutionary smoking his ubiquitous cigar, made £1342 comfortably over its higher estimate. Another portrait to do particularly well was Smoke and Veil, Paris 1958 by William Klein (lot 105) which sold for £4392 (estimate £2000-3000).