A treasure trove of literary first editions collected
by an English teacher has sold at auction in Edinburgh for a total of £226,000.
Bruce Ritchie,
from Stirling who died in October 2012, owned first editions of classic works
such as Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843).
The lot also
contained The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908) and Evelyn Waugh's
Brideshead Revisited.
A first edition
of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was bought for £1,875.
A movie adaptation
of the story by Australian director Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio
is opening the Cannes film festival.
A first edition
of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) was among the lots and was sold for £4,400 by
Lyon & Turnbull which described the collection as "one of the most
remarkable private libraries of English literature" to come to auction.
Mr Ritchie
attended Dollar Academy in Clackmannanshire, studied English and German at St
Andrews University, then took up a post at Merchant Taylors' private school in
London where he was described as an "inspirational" teacher.
He taught the
son of playwright Tom Stoppard, who paid tribute following Mr Ritchie's death
last year, saying: "I've known very few people as kind, as learned, as
civilised as Bruce. The world is poorer without him."
John Sibbald,
book specialist at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh, said after the sale:
"This was an outstanding result."
Some of the first editions in the sale
History Of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749) - £1,700
The Rape Of The Lock by Alexander Pope (1714) - £1,800
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843) - £2,700
Prufrock by TS Eliot (1917) - £3,600
The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908) - £1,200
Dubliners by James Joyce (1916) - £3,800
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945) - £1,600
Source: BBC
Thinking of buying something on Amazon?
Kindly use the link below:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.