One of Jane Austen's Seven "Horrid Novels" Leads Ombersley Court Library Sale

A first English edition of the Gothic novel The Necromancer, bearing the crested monogram of Mary Hill, Marchioness of Downshire, Baroness Sandys has been sold at Chorley’s Auctioneers for £12,500. 

The book is one of the “horrid novels” referred to in Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey and features graphic scenes of killings, hauntings and violence in Germany's Black Forest.

Other highlights from the auction included the rare second edition of the first English feminist tract Women’s Rights: An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, 1696 by Judith Drake which made £5,000 following enthusiastic bidding online and in the saleroom. The treatise is a defence against male accusations of ignorance, vanity and enviousness in women and it also addresses the faults of men, particularly satirizing some of Drake’s contemporaries.

The volume was among more than 1,000 rare books and manuscripts auctioned by Chorley’s from the Ombersley Court Library in Worcestershire, owned by the Sandys family for centuries and has been largely untouched since the early 19th century.

In the same sale, a signed manuscript letter by William III of Orange, King of England (1689-1702) to Henry, Viscount Sidney instructing the formation of a Regiment in Ireland in 1692 was sold to a private collector for £3,500.

Werner Freundel, director and book specialist for Chorley’s said: “It was an honour to handle this impressive library, collected over centuries by members of the Sandy’s family. It took us three months to catalogue and value the full collection which had been well cared for by generations of the family.”

Other highlights included:

• a 1702 Boston printing of Increase Mather’s Discourses, which alongside other volumes in the lot achieved £8,500
• Thomas Nicols A Lapidary: Or, The History of Precious Stones, the first book written in English about gemstones, published in 1652 in an almost filigree gilt tooled vellum, made £8,000
• James Lind’s An Essay on the most effectual Means, of preserving the Health of Seamen, 1757 sold for £3,800