Golden Cockerel Press, Modern First Editions and a Royal Album among items available in Auction #41

Among a selection of private press books are two major titles from the Golden Cockerel Press. First, Four Gospels of the Lord Jesus Christ, one of the supreme achievements of this Press and also undoubtedly Eric Gill's masterpiece of book illustration. With 64 wood engraved illustrations and initial letters by Gill (reserve $10,500), and second, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam with engravings by Buckland-Wright.

Housed a fine fall-down back box with a crimson morocco back and tan buckram cloth sides it includes the original publisher's mock-up with the title page design in pencil and with Christopher Sandford's notes and type size instructions to the printer in the margin and proofs and trials of the eight engravings. Also Buckland-Wright's manuscript list of the order in which the content appears with Sandford's revisions, marked galleys of the 75 quatrains, and the remainder of the text of the published edition. (reserve$3000). From the Trianon Press is Copy 'S' of sixteen lettered copies of special edition of Ben Shahn's The Haggadah for Passover published in 1966, which includes an extra set of the colour plates on Auvergne hand-made paper; a set of plates left uncoloured, on Arches verge paper; three original guide-sheets and stencils; and two proof states of the lithograph frontispiece (reserve $2500).

Modern first editions include the first UK editions of Stephen King’s Carrie (reserve $1100) and Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (reserve $1500) as well as the uncorrected proof copy of the first edition of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (reserve $2800).

For royalty collectors there is a large album containing 263 photographs from the royal tour to South Africa in 1947. During this extensive royal trek the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses visited South Africa, Swaziland and the then Rhodesia. The album is thought to have been compiled by one of the official photographers from images not used in the media at the time. One photograph of the king shows him with a cigarette in his mouth which would certainly have been censored (reserve $500).