According to BBC, the first edition books by 19th and 20th century authors - part of a sale of 3,000 books in Dorset - were quickly bid up by buyers from around the UK The three private collections sold in Dorchester had never been on the market before. They included an edition of Hardy's The Trumpet Major, which sold for £3,600 to a Dorset collector. In the UK, people like Hardy and his first edition enjoy a good market.
Another private collector and dealer from Dorset snapped up a rare first edition of Hardy's Under The Greenwood Tree, published in 1872, for £550, a first edition of Hardy's Wessex Tales, published in two volumes, for £900, and a 16-volume set of The Wessex Novels in original green cloth bindings for £50
A volume of Hardy's own copy of Virgil's Opera Omnia with a very early Hardy signature dated 1859 sold for £900 to a London dealer. Hardy was 19 when he signed it, so it was very early for Hardy collectibles.
A Charles Dickens business card, advertising his services as a shorthand writer of 10 Norfolk Street, Fitzroy Square, fetched £1,800. Before he started to write his novels, Dickens was a clerk in a London city office which is where he got a lot of his insight into solicitors and office clerks which he wrote about in his novels.
Thomas Hardy was born in the Dorset hamlet of Higher Bockhampton, near Dorchester, in 1840 and based a number of his works on his home county.
Four years ago, a set of first editions by Hardy raised £30,000 at the auction house near the author's home.
And England swings like a pendalum do!
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