Bidders spent more than €250,000 on rare books, manuscripts and maps at Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers' sale in the Clyde Court Hotel, Dublin on Tuesday. More than 950 lots went under the hammer and some 75 per cent sold. The highest price achieved was for a set of five workhouse minute-books from
Co Tipperary, dating from the Famine, which sold for € 4,200 (€1,200-€1,600). The Commentaries of Caesar by William Duncan, (1753), made €3,400 (€550-€750). A first edition of Whoroscope by Samuel Beckett, one of 100 copies, signed and inscribed by Beckett to his college friend Billy Cunningham was sold, with a photograph showing Cunningham beside Beckett on a golf links, for €4,200 (€3,000-€5,000).
Oriental Field Sports by Capt Thomas Williamson, made €1,100 (€700-€1,000); and, a second edition, 1813, and missing some plates, of the two-volume Narrative of a Five Year Expedition by Capt JG Stedman made €240 (€300-€400).
The unpublished journal of Henry MacDermot, narrating his voyage to the Cape of Good Hope during the Napoleonic wars made €1,500 (€1,200- €1,800). Through Connemara in a Governess Cart by Somerville and Ross made €190 (€120-€180) A collection of 10 documents relating to 19th-century poteen seizures in Co Carlow made €140 (€150-€180). The Dolmens of Ireland by William C Borlase sold for €400, well below the estimate (€750-€1,250) but the Indexes to Irish Wills (1909-1920) exceeded the estimate and sold for €420 (€200-€300).
