THE CALVERT COLLECTION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19196, 12 June 1924, Page 8

THE CALVERT COLLECTION.

AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND BOOKS. DISPERSAL BY AUCTION. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LODON. May 6. What is known as (he Calvert Collection was put up for auction a few days ago by Messrs Hodgson and Uo., Chancery lane, and was dispersed at very satisfactory prices. Thus valuable collection was begun by the late John Calvert, during his life in Australia, and was extended by his nephew, Mr George Calvert, in recent years. All the books related to Australia and New Zealand and the British possessions in the South Seas, and many of them were very rare editions. Only two or three lots were unique, and these were disposed of at high prices. It, is satisfactory to know that, a New Zealand firm represented in London watches sales such as these on behalf of a leading dominion library. One of the first important volumes to lie offered for sale was Vancouver’s Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Round the World. This comprised three yolumes with a ra-ro atlas of charts and coast-line views, and sold for £24. Five volumes of Burney’s Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean realised £ls ss. Lycett's volume of coloured views of Australia was sold at £l6 ss, and Atkinson’s Account of the State of Agriculture and Grazing in New South Wales, with panoramic coloured views of Port Jackson and Sydney, for £ls. The highest price realised for one lot was obtained for a collection of original and unpublished pen and nib and water colour drawings by P. H F. Phelps, a settler in Svdney about (he voar 1840. Thero were 270 sketches in all. and these illustrated Australian scenery, natural history specimens. and the customs and habits of the aborigines. There was keen bidding and the lot. eventually went to a private bidder at £B6. Tliore were altont 10 works dealing exclusively with New Zealand in the early days, but none of these was unique. The highest price (£l9 10s) was obtained for Angas's “The New Zealanders Illustrated ” This large volume contains 60 finely coloured plates including portraits of Maori chiefs. Native customs and art, implements, and landscapes. Brces’s pictorial Illustrations of New Zealand brought £5 10s. and the coloured edition of (he same brought £l2, Major Stack’s Six Views in the Province of Auckland, printed in 1862, sold for £ l s 10s. The remainder of the Early New Zealand works, some of them running into six volumes, sold at prices ranging up to about £4 10s. Majorgeneral Robley’s “ Moko ’’ sold at £2 18s, In addition, there were a number of bound volumes of Pine Books relating to Australia and New Zealand. The buyer of these obviously bad a commission to buy them up for Australian and New Zealand libraries. The majority of the 300 lets w>eTe taken by a buyer representing a well-known second-hand dealer, but, ,t is understood flint n number of the books w'erc bought up on behalf of libraries in the United States, a country which has loeen specialising very largely in Polynesian antiques during the past few years.