A collection of Somerville and Ross first editions sold for 750.
A collection of first editions of Somerville and Ross spanning more than 50 years made 750 at Fonsie Mealy’s rare book auction in Dublin on December 10. With plain cloth bindings the collection ranged from the publication in 1893 of Through Connemara in a Governess Car to Maria and Some Other Dogs of 1949. It included their classic Further Experiences of an Irish R.M. in 1908.
Irish literary figures featured strongly in a sale which realised more than 250,000 at hammer. A signed copy of Patrick Kavanagh’s Collected Poems made 750, a “Choice” Irish Poetry Anthology including work by Beckett, Heaney,Boland, Clarke and Kinsella, made 2,700, a first English edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses with errata sold for 1,500 and an original recording of James Joyce reading Anna Livia Plurabelle made 3,000.
The top lot of the auction related to Tipperary during the Great Famine and comprises an important record of the administration of a Tipperary workhouse during the famine. The five manuscript volumes of workhouse minute books sold for 4,200 over a top estimate of 1,600.