A single-owner collection focusing on the polar regions was a notable feature of the travel section of the October 4 sale held by Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium). It included, at a 10-times estimate £3000, the posthumously published Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph Rene Bellot.
Issued in two blind-stamped and gilt decorated volumes in 1855, the work includes Bellot’s own journal and an account of William Kennedy’s 1851 Franklin search expedition.
During their searches Bellot accompanied Kennedy on a 1100- mile sledge journey but in 1852, while attempting to make contact with another of the searchers sent out from England, Sir Edward Belcher, he disappeared into an ice crevasse in the Wellington Channel.