A first signed limited edition of Ulysses by James Joyce made €18,500 at hammer at the opening day of Fonsie Mealy’s rare book and collectors sale in Dublin today. Published by The Bodley Head in 1936 it was No. 20 in a limited edition of 100 copies in a cover designed by Eric Gill. It had been estimated at €8,000-€12,000. A group of original watercolours of the West Indies c1792 by Sir William Young, inherited by the Day family of Cork and on the market for the first time in 230 years, made a hammer price of €12,000. The auction continues tomorrow.
First Ever All-Ireland Football Medal, 1887 Won by Limerick Commercials
The first ever All-Ireland Football medal from 1887 made a hammer price of 32,000 on May 31. The medal was won by Jeremiah Kennedy of Limerick Commercials, Limerick, who beat Young Irelands of Louth, on a score line of 1-4 to 0-3. The match was played on a field in Clonskeagh, Dublin known as ‘The Big Bank’ on April 28, 1888. The Limerick team of 1887, were not photographed on the occasion of their win, they received no trophy, and really no recognition until they were issued with this medal in 1910. The Mick Darcy Tipperary and Dublin GAA medal collection made €8,800 and All Ireland hurling final programmes for 1941 and 1944 each made €3,000.
A first edition of Ulysses by James Joyce sold for a hammer price of 9,500 at Fonsie Mealy’s online rare books and collectibles sale in Castlecomer today. Published by Shakespeare and Co. in Paris in 1922 this was number 285 of 750 copies on handmade paper.
Joyce’s A Protest Against Plagiarism, an original printed copy of the protest and appeal issued in French by a constellation of American and European literary and cultural figures in 1927 over the unauthorised publication of sections of Ulysses by American publisher Samuel Roth in his Two Worlds Monthly magazine, without permission or royalty and in ‘un texte incomplete’ sold for 4,600. Signatories range from Albert Einstein to H.G. Wells, W.B. Yeats, Virginia Woolf, Paul Valery, Bertrand Russell, Marcel Prevost, Sean O’Casey, Liam O’Flaherty, E. Oe. Somerville, Italo Svevo, Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway, Alice S. Green, Andre Gide, Augusta Gregory, Benedetto Croce, John Galsworthy, Robert Bridges, Arnold Bennett, Knut Hamsun, Wyndham Lewis, Gabriel Miro, Bunin, Luigi Pirandello, T.S.Eliot. The extraordinary range and quality of the signatories testifies to Joyce’s worldwide reputation and influence, five years after publishing Ulysses.
An Atlas Folio of monuments in Egypt and Nubia by Ippolito Rosellini published in Pisa in three volumes from 1832-34 with 134 plates sold for 25,000 at hammer. It had been estimated at 5,000-7,000. This was the top lot in a sale which realised just over 440,000 on the hammer.
A first edition of Ulysses is among a range of rarities at Fonsie Mealy‘s rare books and collectors sale online at Castlecomer on December 9 and 10. More than 1,300 lots will come under the hammer at the two day sale. Ulysses is estimated at €7,000-€9,000. An admission ticket to the infamous Bloody Sunday football match at Croke Park on November 21, 1920 has an estimate of €2,000-€3,000 and there is an estimate of €4,000-€6,000 on a rare gold medal from the first anniversary of Bloody Sunday tournament. It is engraved with an Irish sportsman standing in front of a goalpost holding a rifle, with two hurleys, a sliotar and a football in the foreground. Among other highly collectible lots is Kevin Barry’s personal crucifix and scapular and a 1955 match programme for an Ireland v Yugoslavia game. Catholics were banned from attending this Dalymount Park match by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid due to the persecution of a catholic bishop in communist Yugoslavia. The army band did not play and the match was not broadcast on Radio Eireann.
A rare gold medal with a player holding a rifle from the Bloody Sunday first anniversary tournament UPDATE: THIS MADE 18,000 AT HAMMER
An illuminated 1667 Charles II Charter detailing property grants in Cork city, minutes from an 1802 meeting of the Dublin Wide Streets Commissioners, a first edition of Ulysses, Republican documents from 1922-24 and Yeats family memorabilia are among a fascinating array of lots at Fonsie Mealy’s rare book sale at the Talbot Hotel, Stillorgan on December 10. The catalogue – in itself worthy of a long, slow browse because of all the avenues of exploration it opens up – list 842 lots.
The sale includes the Cormac McCarthy collection of the recently deceased Dr. Philip Murray of Sligo which spans lot 712-740. Dr. Murray, whose extraordinary collection of first editions made 275,000 at a Fonsie Mealy sale in 2016, maintained a friendship with the Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist, author and screenwriter and the catalogue contains a photo of the pair of them taken in Sligo.
The catalogue cover is Edward Bunting’s 1840 work The Ancient Music of Ireland arranged for piano forte, there is a fascinating archive of almost 500 Quaker letters in Ireland between 1770 and 1830 and signed first editions by many famous authors. Lot 481 is John T. Gilbert’s 1874-1884 Account of Facsimiles of National Manuscripts of Ireland from the earliest specimens to AD 719 in four volumes. It contains some documents which were destroyed when the Public Records Office was burned down in 1922. The illuminated Charles II Charter was published to satisfy demands of the 49 officers who served in the royalist army in Ireland, remained loyal to the king and were not granted lands by the Cromwellian government. It lists property in Cork city held by catholics in 1641, forfeited under Cromwell and now granted to the officers who petitioned. The Civil Survey for Cork City and County, apart from the barony of Muskerry, has not survived so this is a document of considerable interest.The focus of lot 566 is on another period. This is a compilation of Republican serparatist periodicals and leaflets 1922-24 bound in a single large volume.
From the Yeats family there is a trunk owned by Jack B. Yeats and held in a bank vault containing personal memorabilia of his marriage of more than 50 years including the shoes worn by Cottie to their wedding in 1894. Among the other items in the trunk was The White Jug, an oil on canvas by Jack B. Yeats of a colourful garden scene (3,000-5,000). The auction ranges far and wide, from a signed copy of Brendan Behan’s Island to the first and only edition of The Ancient and Present State of Youghal by Thomas Lord, dated 1784 to the heraldic grants to the Delaval family of Seaton Delaval, Northumberland to the Yeats family copy of Hilary Pyle’s catalogue raisonne of the Yeats oil paintings.
UPDATE: The Charles II Charter made 2,000; the first edition of Ulysses sold for 12,000; Irish Republican documents made 11,000; Toome by Seamus Heaney, limited to 15 copies, made 11,000; the Cormac McCarthy archive made just under 40,000 on the hammer; The White Jug by Yeats made 18,000 and wedding anniversary memorabilia from Jack and Cottie Yeats made 4,000.
Minutes from the trailblazing meetings of the Dublin Wide Streets Commissioners . UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 2,000 AT HAMMER
There is nothing new about dirty tricks in political campaigns as illustrated by lot 48 at Mullen’s Collectors Cabinet auction at Laurel Park, Bray on November 23. The newspaper billboard poster for the Star headlines: “Parnell cross-examined”. This was at a special commission set up by Gladstone’s government to investigate various charges against Parnell and his Home Rule party. The basis was a letter in The Times in which Parnell appeared to give explicit support, after the fact, to the Phoenix Park murders. The commission sat for 128 days to November 1889. The following February one of the witnesses, Richard Piggott, admitted having forged the letters, then fled to Madrid and shot himself. Parnell’s name was fully cleared.
A first edition of Ulysses, a pro-Treaty campaign poster for the 1922 general election, an electric guitar signed by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits and a leather flying helmet from a Polish Air Force bomber which crashed on the Carlow Laois border in 1943 are among the lots. Viewing is from next Wednesday and the auction is at 11 am on Saturday.
