Science, fantasy and horror was the principal theme of a PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) sale of October 5, though there were also books to appeal to broader literary tastes.
One such was an 1817 copy in original boards of Maria Edgworth’s Comic Dramas that sold for $2750 (£2100). The binding, though rather battered, was the original one of boards with a paper label and it bore on the front pastedown the armorial bookplate of the 2nd Marquis of Stafford, one of the country’s richest men at the time, known as the ‘Leviathan of Wealth’.
The real attraction, however, was the owner’s signature at the head of the half title: ‘P.B.Shelley’.