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Tuesday 20th May. Bonhams, Oxford. A very interesting sale of collectible books gathered by Oxfam shops across the country including first editions by Arthur Conan Doyle, D.H. Lawrence, J.K. Rowling, and C.S. Lewis amongst other.
As Simon Roberts of Bonhams Books, Maps and Manuscript Department, comments: "It’s extraordinary what emerges from Oxfam. Some of these books have been handed in with little knowledge of their true value. Many I suspect have been job lots passed on as householders clear their bookshelves to make space available."
The star item in the sale is Lot 67, A Study in Scarlet, the first ever Sherlock Holmes adventure in which Conan Doyle introduces Sherlock Holmes to his readers in a story published in Samuel Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887. The Lot also contains “Two Original Plays for Home Performance”, a wood-engraved frontispiece and illustrations by D.H. Friston and W.M.R. Quick, and is expected to achieve between £7,000-9,000.
Another great Victorian author featured in the sale is a friend of Conan Doyle’s, his sometime golf partner and East Sussex neighbour, Rudyard Kipling. Lot 79, The Jungle Book, is a first edition with illustrations published in 1894 and is expected to reach in excess of £800.