Chiswick Auctions’ Books sale, on May the 14th, is wide-ranging and features a number of highlights.
The food and drink section includes The English Vineyard Vindicated, with a probable manuscript correction by author John Evelyn, who wrote under the instruction of John Rose, the King’s Gardener. The rarity of this first edition of 1666, printed ‘at the Ship in St. Paul's Church-Yard’, is often attributed to the Great Fire of London. Also included is a pioneering work on ethical vegetarianism published in 1683, namely Thomas Tryon’s The Way to Health, Long Life and Happiness. For Tryon, who had visited Barbados and been horrified by slavery, vegetarianism formed part of a broader reaction against humanity’s evils.
Under English Literature, we have a first edition of John Keats’s Lamia, containing ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode to Psyche’, and ‘Ode to Melancholy’. His last and most important book, it was published in July 1820, less than a year before his tragic death from tuberculosis in Rome.
The sale also features an original design by artist William Nicholson, depicting a boxing match. The famous image illustrated the month of November in An Almanac of Twelve Sports (1898), with verse provided by Rudyard Kipling.
In the Travel section, highlights include six watercolours by James Wathen from his Voyage, in 1811 and 1812, to Madras and China, which a contemporary reviewer argued “will be followed by the reader and the gazer with much gratification”. This section also includes a first French edition of Cornelis De Bruyn’s account of his circuitous voyage to Persia, with numerous striking illustrations and panoramas of Moscow and Isfahan.
Lot 1 - Bilberg (Johan), Refractio solis inoccidui, in septemtrionalibus oris...
Sold for £756
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 7 - Science fiction: Holberg (Ludvig) Nicolai Klimii iter subterraneum…, first edition, 1741
Sold for £378
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 8 - Baskerville Press, The Book of Common Prayer, first edition, 1760
Sold for £227
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 12 - American Constitution: Sylvanus Urban [Edward Cave], The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1787
Sold for £479
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 14 - Booth (Charles) Life and Labour of the People in London, Third Series, 1902
Sold for £1,764
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 28 - Anstey. The Patriot: a Pindaric Address to Lord Buckhorse. 1767
Sold for £277
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 30 - Belcher. The Art of [c. 1815]Boxing, or Science of Manual Defence
Sold for £819
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 31 - Boxing The life and adventures of the renowned Johnny Walker [1857]
Sold for £3,528
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 32 - Boxing. Belcher. The Art of Boxing, or Science of Manual Defence…[1820]
Sold for £1,260
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 33 - Boxing. Famous Fights in the Prize Ring, a periodical 1883
Sold for £252
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 35 - Boxing. Humphreys.The Memoirs of John Scoggins, 1827
Sold for £529
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 36 - Boxing. Jem Ward's Picture of the Great Fight between Tom Sayers and J.C. Heenan. [c.1860]
Estimated at £400 - £600
Lot 37 - Boxing. Life and Battles of Jack Dempsey. New York, 1889
Sold for £353
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 38 - Boxing. Life and Battles of James J. Corbett. The Champion Pugilist of the World. 1892
Sold for £302
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 39 - Boxing. The Art of Boxing [c.1821-22], and others ., (30)
Sold for £605
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 41 - Fitzsimmons. His Life and Battles in the Prize Ring…, NY 1897
Sold for £454
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 42 - Godfrey. A Treatise Upon the Useful Science of Defence......, 2nd. Ed 1747
Sold for £4,536
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 45 - Miles. Tom Sayers, sometime champion of England, his life and pugilistic career… 1866
Sold for £1,008
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 46 - Sayers. Memoirs of Tom Sayers, Champion of England, 1858
Sold for £1,386
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 47 - The Complete Art of Boxing according to the Modern Method... 1789
Sold for £1,008
Includes Buyer's Premium
Lot 48 - The Lives and Battles of Tom Sayers, the Champion of England, and John C. Heenan, NY 1860
Sold for £302
Includes Buyer's Premium