Once upon a time, children's illustrated books with characters like Peter Rabbit, Simpkin, Eeyore and Toad delighted generations of children with stories of their every adventure. Today, it's the turn of the big kids and the serious book collector to get a thrill at the high values fetched by these classic childhood tales at auction.
At a recent auction at Bonhams in London, a Beatrix Potter watercolour of two rabbits, one leaving the warmth of the tree house to set out into the snow, fetched £39,100. Drawn around 1890, long before she began illustrating her own books, the original design far exceeded the guide price of £10,000 to £15,000.
At the same auction, a Kate Greenaway watercolour of a procession of children first exhibited in 1874 sold for £8,050. Meanwhile an E.H. Shephard ink drawing of Eeyore made £2,900, a first edition of Beatrix Potter's The Fairy Caravan, while an unpublished 1946 Mervyn Peake illustrated nonsense poem sold for £2,990.
Another Mervyn Peake ink drawing of a man seated in tears with his arms raised above his head reads: Again! again! and yet again/ I find my skull's too small/ For all the jokes that throng my brain/ And have no point at all! It fetched £2,185.
Michael Heseltine, a specialist in book illustration and children's books (who is happy to be contacted for book valuations at 00 44 181 979 4088), says the value of a book will be determined by a combination of factors like its age, author and condition.
But age alone "doesn't matter". For instance the relatively recent 1972 first edition of Watership Down by Richard Adams is already fetching £300 to £400. And a 1937 first edition of J.R.R. Tolkein's The Hobbit in good condition complete with dust jacket can fetch up to £2,000. "You pay a lot for the dust jacket," says Mr Heseltine. Without that jacket it might fetch £400 to £600.
He says that a first edition set of A.A. Milne's four Christopher Robin books (When We Were Very Young, Winnie-the-Pooh, Now We Are Six and The House at Pooh Corner) which were published between 1924 and 1928 in the original bindings with dust jackets and in good condition will fetch in the region of £5,000 to £7,500.
Mr Heseltine says that Beatrix Potter the main run of whose tales were published between 1901 and 1919 is "highly collected" and her early books are "extremely rare". He explains that she had to have Peter Rabbit published privately and there were only some 500 copies. Depending on condition and whether it is inscribed by the author, one of these books can fetch between £30,000 and £40,000. An inscription can make a big difference to the value depending on the association with the author of the person to whom it is inscribed.
Classics like the first edition in 1865 of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll are "as rare as hen's teeth" and would fetch "perhaps £100,000", he explains. Carroll an Oxford don was not happy with the illustrations and withdrew it from publication.
Some of the books were given to children in hospitals but because of fears of contagion from the sickbeds of dying children they were destroyed. Other unbound sheets were sent to the US where they were published under the Appleton imprint. The American imprint would fetch "thousands, but not £100,000".
Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense of 1846 is another rare book. It should fetch in the region of £5,000 to £10,000. Mr Heseltine believes there may well be rare and valuable books as yet undetected in Ireland because of the "wonderful literary tradition in Ireland". They can be discovered under floor boards, in attics or even in old libraries where they lie undetected for years.
The next children's book auction at Bonhams will take place on June 2nd.
