Rare Book Monthly
Articles - November - 2003 Issue
America, America (and two more Americas)<br>Four new Americana Catalogues
First Edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. From James Cummins.
For those who collect autographs, here’s an amazing item from bookselling history. It’s the autograph album from Scribner’s Bookstore in New York. From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, over 100 authors and celebrities signed the book, including such names as Tennessee Williams, Charles Addams, Katherine Anne Porter, Joseph Heller, Basil Rathbone, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Lillian Hellman. Item 128. $3,000.
Robert Frost is represented by four items. Number 48 is his first book, A Boy’s Will, from 1913. This is a second issue of the first edition. $1,000. Item 45 is a first edition of The Trial by Existence from 1960, signed by Frost and 23 others at a Grolier Club dinner in Frost’s honor. $1,000.
For those looking for an invite to a special event, there’s a complete invitation to FDR’s first inaugural. It includes a program, photographs of Roosevelt and Vice-President-elect John Nance Garner, an engraved invitation, acceptance card, response envelope and original mailing envelope. It came from the estate of Esther Lape, one of the founders of the League of Women Voters and a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. $1,000.
From the famous to the unknown, item 101 is a remarkable collection of letters and other documents of the Polony family, of France, New York, and St Louis. This collection of 27 letters between family members who emigrate from France to New York and then to St. Louis and those who remained in the original homeland cover a span of 70 years, from 1801 to 1871. Many historic events on both sides of the Atlantic through this long period of time are touched upon in these letters. $4,000.
From Truman Capote, we have a signed first edition of In Cold Blood. Item 14. $1,750. Item 15 is an unusual one. It’s a vinyl recording of Truman Capote Reading His A Christmas Memory from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It is inscribed with Christmas wishes for 1965 from Capote to “Kay,’ who is Washington Post editor Katherine Graham. $1,250.
The Cummins catalogue also includes numerous photographic portraits from Carl Van Vechten. Among his subjects are Capote, W.H. Auden, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Evelyn Waugh, Gore Vidal, and Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. James Cummins Bookseller can be reached in New York at 212-688-6441.
Our next catalogue is “No. 74, Rare Americana,” from David M. Lesser Fine Antiquarian Books. Lesser offers a collection of books and documents primarily from the 18th and 19th centuries. Included are numerous sermons from religious leaders that frequently focused on the issues of the day, both religious and political. From colonial days there are exhortations of liberty from English institutions, later support for the new nation, and eventually many abolitionist speeches.
