• Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [RUTH, George Herman “Babe” (1895-1948)]. Signed photograph. Circa 1930s. 191 x 248 mm. $1,500 to $2,500.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HARRISON, Benjamin. Document signed (“Benj Harrison”) as governor of Virginia, certifying the service of Daniel Cumbo, a Black Revolutionary soldier. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: ONE OF THE FIRST PRINTED ANNOUNCEMENTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: FIRST PRINTING OF LINCOLN’S IMMORTAL GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HIGHLY IMPORTANT MORMON ARCHIVE. ALLEY, George. Archive of 23 Autograph Letters Signed by Mormon Convert George Alley to His Brother Joseph Alley. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [AVIATION]. [ARMSTRONG, Neil A.] Aviation Hall of Fame Gold Medal MS64 NGC, Awarded to Neil Armstrong in 1979. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: NEWLY DISCOVERED FIRST PRINTING OF "WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE... " FROM THE ONLY NEWSPAPER ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL PROCESSION. $4,000 to $8,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: THE MOST IMPORTANT GEORGE WASHINGTON DOCUMENT IN PRIVATE HANDS; GEORGE WASHINGTON’S COMMISSION AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF, 1775, ONE OF ONLY TWO ORIGINALS. $150,000 to $250,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: A VERY RARE ACCOUNT OF BLACKBEARD’S DEATH AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PIRATE ITEMS EXTANT. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: EDISON, Thomas. Patent for Edison’s Improvements on the Electric-Light, No. 219,628. [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Patent Office], 16 September 1879. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [VIETNAM WAR]. The original pen used by Secretary of State William P. Rogers to sign the Vietnam Peace Agreement, Paris, 27 January 1973. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: SONS OF LIBERTY FOUNDER COLONEL BARRÉ ANNOTATED TITLE-PAGE, “WHICH OUGHT TO ROUSE UP BRITISH ATTENTION”. $4,000 to $6,000.
  • Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG BEADED JUDICIAL COLLAR. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A COMPLETE RUN OF VISIONAIRE MAGAZINE THROUGH 2010. $6,000 - $9,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: LAW REVIEW OFFPRINT SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG. $3,000 - $5,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: META REBNER'S WORKING SCRIPT OF THE LOVED ONE. $1,500 - $2,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A KATHY GROVE PORTRAIT OF CYNDI LAUPER FOR THE FEBRUARY 1989 DETAILS COVER. $800 - $1,200
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A PLASTIC COAT BY MILLIE DAVID FEATURED IN SOHO NEWS STYLE SECTION, FROM THE COLLECTION OF ANNIE FLANDERS. $500 - $700
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG JEWELRY BOX. $600 - $900
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A SET OF JONI MITCHELL LYRICS FOR "IF I HAD A HEART." $2,000 - $3,000
  • Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: [Langland (William)]. The vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde time imprinted..., Roberte Crowley, 1550. £8,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: [Shakespeare (William)]. [Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies], second folio edition, [by Tho.Cotes, for Robert Allot], [1632]. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Bible, Czech Biblia Bohemica, first complete Bible printed in the Czech vernacular, Prague, August 1488. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Shabthai Tzvi.- Collection of four printed and illustrated broadsides detailing the appearance, rise and fall of the false messiah, Shabthai Tzvi, Augsburg, 1666-67. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [fourteenth century (c.1310)]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Aubrey (John). [Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme], manuscript in English, Latin and Greek, [c. 1693]. £30,000 to £50,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Poems on Various Occasions, first edition, Harriet Maltby's copy, Newark, Printed by S. & J. Ridge, 1807. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression with dust-jacket, 1937 [but 1938]. £7,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Blake (William).- Thornton (Robert John). The Pastorals of Virgil, 2 vol., engraved plates by William Blake, 1821. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: America.- Mount (William J.) & Thomas Page. The English Pilot…, [bound with] The Fourth Book, describing The West Indies Navigation from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones, 1721. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Oldfield (Henry Ambrose), Rajman Singh Chitrakar & others. An album of 160 photographs and 13 original artworks, (1833-1919), [c. 1850s-1880s]. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Audubon (John James) [and William MacGillivray]. Ornithological Biography…, 5 vol., first edition, presentation copy inscribed by Audubon, Edinburgh, 1831-49 [i.e. 1831-39]. £10,000 to £15,000.
  • 19th Century Shop
    Catalogue 198 just published
    19th Century Shop. Darwin and Wallace, first printing of the first paper on natural selection
    19th Century Shop. Shakespeare’s Poems, first collected edition
    19th Century Shop. Walt Whitman portrait inscribed with a Leaves of Grass poem
    19th Century Shop. Major Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript notebook
    19th Century Shop. Spock's Baby Book, original MS
    19th Century Shop. Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, the great celestial atlas

Rare Book Monthly

Articles - November - 2016 Issue

Nov 22: Rare Books, Autographs and Photographs at Doyle New York

Highlight lots from Doyle New York's sale of Rare Books, Autographs and Photographs

Ted Ripley-Duggan, Vice-President of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Doyle New York, has a habit of preparing auction summaries for Rare Book Monthly that are more thorough than our normal auction previews. He did it back in April, and he’s done it again for Doyle’s semi-annual sale of Rare Books, Autographs and Photographs, which is scheduled for November 22, 2016 at 10 am eastern time. The full catalog is viewable on Doyle’s website. With just over 600 lots, I’ve decided it’s best to allow him to provide the full rundown of what the sale has to offer collectors of Americana, autographs, natural history, literature, and more. The following auction preview is courtesy of Ted Ripley-Duggan:

The catalogue begins with 78 lots of deaccessions from the Library of the Explorers Club. These include a very rare guide to the Holy Land by Ludolphus de Suchen, the Iter ad Terram Sanctam, issued in Strasbourg about 1475-80. This book, intended for pilgrims, is one of the first travel guides. Other works include Blagdon’s A Brief History of Ancient and Modern India bound as usual with the companion work by Hunter (a classic of the color plate literature on India). There is also a set of Staunton’s Authentic Account of an Embassy…to the Emperor of China, including the fine pictorial atlas, and a variety of other works, including many of substantial rarity. While the books bear the bookplate of the Club, and some its blind-stamp, it is hard to imagine a more appropriate association; one of those few cases where a library marking is not a significant detriment.

Americana, a longtime strength of Doyle’s auctions, includes a late letter by John Wilkes Booth. Written on 14 November 1864, this (in veiled and secretive terms) speaks of Booth’s desire to have a bag returned to him, from context well-nigh certainly containing a gun, probably his cherished derringer. The following year, on April 15 he assassinated Abraham Lincoln, quite conceivably with this firearm. Booth letters written so close to that terrible event are, to say the least, infrequently offered for sale.

This is followed shortly thereafter by a copy the first edition of Adam Smith’s 1776 An Inquiry…Into the Wealth of Nations, the first edition, a copy belonging to a member of the Boswell family (sadly, not James). The next item in the sale is a manuscript that preserves the official returns from the British Colonies in the Americas, Lord Dartmouth’s copy, compiled on the eve of the Revolution. It contains a cornucopia of information on the material wealth of the Colonies and its sources, a focus that speaks to myopia to the mounting tensions in America on the part of British officials. The next lot pertains to the Revolution itself, and the Declaration of Independence, as represented by the very rare newspaper printing of July 10, 1776 in The Pennsylvania Journal; and the Weekly Advertiser from the great patriot printer, William Bradford. All early newspaper printings of the Declaration are desirable, and only eight copies are known of this, generally considered the sixth appearance in an American newspaper.

The Americana section contains the first four editions of the Book of Mormon, and a wealth of manuscript material, that includes the diary of Edward Cutbush, the first surgeon of the United States Navy, along with a fine selection of autograph material, mostly of North American interest (from a private collection) which includes a nearly complete run of American Presidential letters and documents, as well as a fine Lafayette letter to McHenry. From another source comes a group of ninety letters by Franklin Pierce to his secretary, Sidney Webster.

Keeping to an American theme, but turning to South America and the liberation movement that led to the overthrow of centuries of Spanish rule, the catalogue moves on to a trove of both manuscript and printed material pertaining to Simón Bolívar and his generals. Much of this was first sold in the 1980s and ‘90s at auction and has been privately held since, and indeed little of this importance has surfaced subsequently. In the space of about forty lots the focus moves from Queen Isabella I of Spain, through some fugitive printings from Venezuela, on to some remarkable letters and documents signed by Bolívar, José Antonio Páez, Antonio José de Sucre and almost all the major figures responsible for casting off the yoke of Spanish rule.

Autographs end with a short but interesting section of music, with three Franz Liszt autograph pieces, a very rare engraving of the young Mozart and his family, a number of signed musical quotations by great composers, as well as an Ed Sullivan Show cue sheet from the 12 September 1965 broadcast, signed by all members of the Beatles.  

Color-plate books include a a set uniformly bound in what are most likely the publisher’s binding of the second octavo edition of Audubon’s Birds and Quadrupeds, and a complete set of the first edition of Wilson’s Ornithology together with Bonaparte’s four-volume extension of that work. In the same section is a good set of the Microcosm of London with early watermarks, and several Rowlandson watercolors including an unpublished one (exhibited in the 1986 Huntington Library show) of Death and the Highwayman intended for the English Dance of Death.

This is followed by a lengthy selection of fine bindings ranging from a very beautiful Scottish “herringbone” binding on the folio Baskett Bible of 1753-4 to a magnificent private collection including some very decorative bindings purchased in the 1988 Doheny sale and others of that period, including examples of the Doves Press, Rivière, Bayntun, Zaehnsdorf and all the usual suspects. This section includes a substantial number of very well-bound editions of major authors such as Balzac, Conrad, Eliot, Prescott, Wilde etc.

Next comes a group of early printing including a collection of fragments from early legal manuscripts, of fragments of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, several incunabula including the very beautiful Koberger Antoninus Florentinus of 1484, the major initials illuminated in the characteristic Nuremberg manner, and a fine collection of early and important editions of Cervantes.

The final two sections of the book sale are Literature, with some interesting offerings including an especially choice Arthur Conan Doyle letter and a first edition in unsophisticated condition of Melville’s Moby-Dick, and a decent section of artist books, private press and similar material, including the Andy Warhol 25 Cats Name[d] Sam and One Blue Pussy.

The book sale is followed by Photography, including some choice photobooks (including signed copies of Robert Frank’s The Americans and The Lines of my Hand, a collection of Ed Ruscha, a very uncommon Wegman artist book the Field Guide to North America and to other Regions containing 34 unique pieces including collages, photographs, drawings, manuscripts etc.

Early photography includes a number of Atgets, three extremely fine large format Curtis prints (two of which are orotypes in the original Curtis frames), and a strong selection of twentieth century work including a number of important portfolios by Caponigro, Porter, Tice etc., as well as images by Ansel Adams, Berenice Abbott, Peter Beard, Bill Brandt, Margaret Bourke-White, Harry Callahan, George Hoynigen-Huene, George Hurrell, O. Winston Link, Robert Rauschenberg, Eugene Smith, Arthur Tress and Edward Weston (among others).

Rare Book Monthly

  • Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Alken (Henry). Sporting Notions, first edition, T.McLean, 1832-33. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Bardi (Lorenzo). Nuova Raccolta delle piu interessanti Vedute della Citta di Firenze…, Florence, Lorenzo Bardi, [c.1840]. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Crawfurd (John). Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava..., first edition, 1829. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Dawe (George, engraver). The Life of a Nobleman, first edition, Geo. Henderson, [c.1825]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: [Doyle (John)], "H.B.". Political Sketches &c., 10 vol. including The Descriptive Key to H.B., Thomas McLean, [1829-51]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Eben (Adolphus Christian Frederick, Baron von) and Nicolaus Heideloff. Modèles de l'Uniforme Militaire Adopté dans l'Armée Royale de Suède, Rudolph Ackerman, 1808. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Geissler (J.G.G.) and Friedrich Hempel. Mahlerische Darstellungen der Sitten, Gebrauche und Lustbarkeiten bey den Russischen, Tartarischen…, 4 parts in 1, Leipzig and Paris, [1804]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Hunt (Charles). Portraits of Winning Horses...of the Derby, Oaks, & St. Leger, from the Year 1842 to 1849…, Rock Brothers & Payne, 1849. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Kunike (Adolf Friedrich). Zwey hundert und sechzig Donau-Ansichten nach dem Laufe des Donaustromes…, Vienna, Leopold Grund, 1826. £3,000 to £5,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Lasinio (Carlo). [Matrimony], Florence, 1790. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Reinhardt (Joseph). A Collection of Swiss Costumes, in Miniature, second English edition, James Goodwin, [1828]. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Wengen (Gottfried Durst von). Die Öffentliche Maskerade Bamberg am Fastnachts-Montage 1833…, Bamberg, [1833]. £2,000 to £3,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Winston Churchill. The Second World War. Set of First-Edition Volumes. 6,000 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: A.A. Milne, Ernest H. Shepard. A Collection of The Pooh Books. Set of First-Editions. 18,600 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Salvador Dalí, Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Finely Bound and Signed Limited Edition. 15,000 USD
    Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ian Fleming. Live and Let Die. First Edition. 9,500 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter Series. Finely Bound First Printing Set of Complete Series. 5,650 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. First Edition, First Printing. 4,200 USD

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