Bromer Booksellers Catalogue 139 has for sale at $10,000 a set of miniature books by Thomas Boreman entitled Westminster Abbey.  The three volumes each contain a frontispiece illustration and there are a total of twenty-nine full-page illustrations from woodcuts. The work is part of Thomas Boreman’s ‘Gigantick Histories’ – a series of miniature books for children.  This title is the only set from the series issued in three volumes. In keeping with publishers of the 18th century each volume has a printed list of subscribers before the contents and given that many of the names are of children it would no doubt have given them some feeling of self-importance.

From the Ashendene Press, The Noble and Joyous Book Entytled Le Morte Darthur, is one of 145 copies. It is illustrated with two full-page woodcuts at the beginning and end of the book and twenty-seven smaller woodcuts in the text which were drawn by Charles M. and Margaret Gere. The text is from Caxton’s 1485 edition. Graily Hewitt designed “two or three alphabets of fine initials (described in Hornby’s bibliography) and they are printed alternately in red and blue. This is the first book of the press to be printed in three colours. The volume is priced at $13,500.

A first edition copy of Ernest Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon is valued at $27,500. It has a presentation inscription dated the month of publication on the front free endpaper: “For Charles K. Jackson Esq. With the very best wishes of Ernest Hemingway September 1932.” The frontispiece is in colour, illustrated by Juan Gris and is titled ‘The Bullfighter’. Hemingway was passionate about bullfighting and viewed it as an art form which he considered to be equally as important as painting or music. This was Hemingway’s first non-fiction work of any length which he wrote while he was living in Key West, Florida, USA.

Containing numerous vignettes and twenty-one tipped-in colour plates by Arthur Rackham plus an extra plate ‘Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell’ William Shakespeare’s The Tempest is for sale at $2,750. The copy is from an edition of 520 copies and this is one of 260 signed by the illustrator and intended for sale in Greta Britain. The drawings are in Rackham’s more mature style with the trees and seashores full of dancing nymphs and odd creatures. The title page is also designed and lettered by Rackham.