A GROUP of photographs taken by one of the most famous children's authors who ever lived has sold for £6,400 in Swindon.

Lewis Carroll took the photo-graphs of the family of Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

The Alice in Wonderland author was a devotee of what was still a new technology in the Victorian era.

The photographs, part of an album of various photo-graphs of the family, were sold at Dominic Winter Book Auctions in Maxwell Street.

Other important lots at yester-day's sale included two rare Beatrix Potter first editions and what was billed as perhaps the finest private collection of Biggles books ever to be auctioned.

Chris Albury, an expert valuer with the auction house, said: "We were expecting the album of photographs to reach between £5,000 and £8,000, so the eventual sale price was more or less right."

Other hits with bidders included a signed pair of Beatrix Potter first editions, which sold for £7,600 each.

The copies of The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin and The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, dating from 1903 and 1904 had each been expected to sell for between £4,000 and £6,000.

However, Mr Albury said both were snapped up by a Bristol-based antiquarian book dealer.

In both cases, he added, the dealer had simply bid steadily until the competition was eliminated.

There was some disappointment in the auction room over patchy sales of what was perhaps the greatest single collection of Biggles books ever to come to auction.

The tales of aviation derring-do, about 100 rare editions in total, had been expected to sell for a total of up to about £30,000.

However, at the end of the day, only about half had sold for a total of some £10,000.

Barrie Hudson