Rare books from Hesketh family go under the hammer for £15m
A RECORD-breaking auction of books and drawings once belonging by the family who own Towcester Racecourse has raised nearly £15 million.
Some of the world’s rarest books collected by Frederick, 2nd Lord Hesketh, went under the hammer at Sothebys in London this month.
The collection was built up by successive generations of the Fermor-Hesketh family, who lived at Easton Neston House and still own Towcester Racecourse.
Before the bibliophile’s collection went under the hammer it was predicted the sale would raise between £8 and £11 million, but the collection of 50 lots exceeded expectation and sold for a staggering £14,971,950.
Among the books sold was John James Audubon’s Birds of America which set a new world record for any printed book sold at auction when it fetched £7.3 million.
David Goldthorpe, Sotheby’s director, books and manuscripts department, said: “Lord Hesketh’s magnificent copy of Audubon’s Birds of America fully deserved the extraordinary price it achieved, which represents a record price for a printed book at auction.
“It is a remarkable work, both in terms of its scale, and in terms of the dedication that went into producing it.
“To have handled such rare and splendid volumes has been a privilege and a joy.”
A spokeswoman from Sotheby’s said there was a “fiery enthusiasm among four collectors bidding on the phones and in the room drove the price rapidly beyond pre-sale expectations.”
The book, which contains 435 individual hand-coloured plates, each one a life-size depiction of the birds, was eventually bought by London dealer Michael Tollemache, who described the work after the sale as “priceless”.
Also fetching impressive bids at the auction was a textually complete copy of the First Folio of William Shakespeare, described as “one of the most important books in English literature” and the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, which sold for £1,497,250.
A watercolour called The Four Seasons Rose by Pierre-Joseph Redoute also set a record for a watercolour by the artist sold at auction.
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