Frontispieces to Colophons
The remarkable book collection of R.J Davies
Our 13th October stand-alone single-owner auction of over 300 lots includes antiquarian volumes, limited editions, author-signed modern first editions and scarce publications. The collection is a wonderful testament to their owner, the ultimate booklover and former bookshop proprietor Ronald Davies.
Highlights from the collection include a vellum-bound Venetian Aldine Press volume of Sallust's account of the Catilinarian conspiracy dated 1567 and bearing the prestigious Aldine device to the frontispiece; a rare 1912 brochure containing Arthur Conan Doyle's defence of the wrongly imprisoned Jewish immigrant Oscar Slater; a large folio edition of Captain Cook's voyages containing the often missing fold-out cloth map; first editions of Agatha Christe and Charles Dickens; beautifully illustrated childrens books; a scarce hand-made Kelmscott Press limited edition of Rosetti's Hand & Soul; oddities such as how to avoid vampires and an 18th century argument to legalise prostitution, and much, much more.
For more than six decades, books were the enduring passion of Ronald John Davies (1940–2026). An avid reader with a deep love of history, Ron first discovered the world of book collecting while working as a booking clerk for London Transport. When his wife brought home a book on Egyptology that she had found in a London second-hand bookshop, it sparked an interest and a collecting passion that would grow to be a defining part of his life.
Evenings and weekends were soon spent exploring second-hand bookshops, markets and house clearances, where Ron developed an extensive knowledge of the second-hand and antiquarian book trade. He loved the thrill of the search and the unexpected discoveries it brought. His tastes were wonderfully eclectic, encompassing fiction and non-fiction, first editions, children’s annuals, history, true crime, travel and adventure and anything unusual or intriguing that caught his eye.
By the 1980s, Ron had begun selling books himself through advertisements, at Greenwich Sunday Market and at book fairs across the country. What had started as a hobby was becoming a way of life. Then in 1984 something momentous happened. A publication called Book and Magazine Collector appeared on newsagent shelves. Ron quickly realised that this was the market place he needed to start dealing on a bigger scale and within a few months he was regularly publishing books for sale in it with great success. A decade before the internet his son and daughter remember being given instructions on what was sold and what was still available as the phone rang off the hook at the family home in south-east London. In December 1984, Ron and his family moved to West Wickham and over the years, the collection steadily expanded until books seemed to occupy every corner of the family home; the dining room in the modest three-bedroom semi was quickly converted into a book store room much to the consternation of his wife!
Over the next eight years his book dealing flourished as did his ambition to open his own book shop. After retiring from London Transport in 1993, Ron was finally able to take a step towards this ambition and began to search for suitable premises from which he could trade. In the meantime, he continued to feature in the Book and Magazine Collector and also published his own listings for established customers.
Soon he was lucky enough to find the right shop just off the high street in West Wickham and in 1995 he opened the West Wickham Bookshop.
Not long after opening, he was told by a visitor to the shop: “You won’t last long”. How wrong that person was! For the next eight years, the shop became a familiar part of the local community and allowed Ron to spend each day doing what he loved most: being surrounded by books, discovering them, sharing his knowledge, and finding new homes for them.
Even after the bookshop closed in 2003, Ron's love for books never diminished. He continued buying and selling online while constantly adding to his own collection until his death in January 2026.
The collection offered here reflects a life devoted to books and the curiosity that inspired Ron to keep searching for the next interesting find. More than simply a collection, it is a celebration of a reader, collector and bookseller for whom books were never just a pastime, but a lifelong passion.
Amongst the eclectic collection are several privately printed and presentation volumes, some with associated personal ephemera. One deeply poignant example is a first edition copy of Hugh Howson's Two Men memoir of two of his fellow Shrewsbury School masters, Evelyn H.L. Southwell and Malcolm G. White, who enlisted in the army together following the death of another schoolmaster friend. Both men were killed during the Somme offensive in 1916, and Howson, who had been deemed unfit for service himself, assembled this book using their surviving letters, diary entries, and his own recollections to document their lives before and during the war. An inserted letter with the volume suggests this copy was sent to Malcolm White's father at the time of publication, thanking him for his contributions and support.
A further poignant inclusion is a newspaper article, probably inserted by White Snr, which details the author's own tragic death in the Piz Roseg Disaster in 1933, along with three other mountaineering Eton masters. Examples such as this display not only Ron's eye for a rare edition, but also his understanding of the historical arc that books can represent across subject, author, and reader.
The full catalogue will be published approx 10 days prior to the auction, and we will be open for viewing for several days before the sale. Preview a small selection of volumes here
