About the time Arlo Guthrie was recording “Alice’s Restaurant,” Mark Burstein was honing his writing skills on his college senior thesis, writing about what would become his life’s passion – Lewis Carroll of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass fame. It is a passion he shares with his father, Sandor, a prolific collector generally and a very determined collector specifically of Carroll for many years. These days, Mark, the fiftyish father of a two-year-old, tends the private garden that is the world of Alice, alive and well these many years since Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writing under the penname Lewis Carroll, first created the book which lives on today as an industry that, like tin soldiers, marches across the intellectual landscape producing websites, auction events, conferences, magazines, books and arguments.
For the Burstein family it started innocently enough. We find, in an oft-told story, that the senior Burstein was introduced to Alice around 1928 by a kindergarten teacher who was appearing in a play as the White Rabbit. Because truth is stranger than most (but not this) fiction, an article in the San Francisco Examiner in the late 1970s brought the kindergarten teacher, then in her eighties, back to the surface when she read an account of Dr. Burstein’s imbroglio with Alice and identified herself as the inspiratrix of this passion play now in full bloom.
Like many serious conditions, the gestation period was long so it wasn’t until the first symptoms were evident in the son that the father developed the full-blown disease. Hence it was, in the otherwise bland 1970s, the disease came to blossom. If the son’s case is acute, the father’s case is chronic. For Mark this passion has been transforming. His home, his collections, and his avocation come together in the clear and precise focus— Lewis Carroll—and it makes for an interesting life.
Sandor, a collector of many things, took to collecting Carroll seriously more than 30 years ago. His interest would lead, in time, to his becoming president of The Lewis Carroll Society of North America (LCSNA – pronounced lasagna?), which is not to be confused with The Lewis Carroll Society of Canada which has not, and perhaps never will be, anything but physically connected to the United States—if only by a common boundary 3,000 measly miles long. These are two separate and distinct places with associations as different as ducks and dodos and let there be no doubt about it! The U.K., Japan, Australia and New Zealand have also raised the Alice flag, and the word is around that entire portion of the middle east, Africa and South America remain up for grabs. We digress.
Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
Sotheby's Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
Bonhams, Apr. 8: First report outside of the colonies of the American Revolution, from American accounts. Printed broadsheet, The London Evening-Post, May 30, 1775. $20,000 - $30,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce, James. The earliest typescript pages from Finnegans Wake ever to appear at auction, annotated by Joyce, 1923. $30,000 - $50,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce's Ulysses, 1923, one of only seven copies known, printed to replace copies destroyed in customs. $10,000 - $15,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: ATHANASIUS KIRCHER'S COPY, INSCRIBED. Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell' Accademia del Cimento, 1667. $2,000 - $3,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Bernoulli's Ars conjectandi, 1713. "... first significant book on probability theory." $15,000 - $25,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Aristotle's Politica. Oeconomica. 1469. The first printed work on political economy. $80,000 - $120,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: John Graunt's Natural and political observations...., 1662. The first printed work of epidemiology and demographics. $20,000 - $30,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: William Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas, 1786. The first work to pictorially represent information in graphics. $15,000 - $25,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Anson's A Voyage Round the World, 1748. THE J.R. ABBEY-LORD WARDINGTON COPY, BOUND BY JOHN BRINDLEY. $8,000 - $12,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: La Perouse's Voyage de La Perouse autour du monde..., 1797. LARGE FINE COPY IN ORIGINAL BOARDS. $8,000 - $12,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Charles Schulz original 8-panel Peanuts Sunday comic strip, 1992, pen and ink over pencil, featuring Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Lucy as a psychiatrist. $20,000 - $30,000
![Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Bible [English]. [The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament, 1562]. £3,000-5,000](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/e47bb03e-3f3d-4f68-9e79-b0b2739ca87c.jpg "<b>Dominic Winter, Apr. 9:</b> Bible [English]. [<i>The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament,</i> 1562]. £3,000-5,000")
