Rare Book Monthly
Articles - January - 2008 Issue
Announcing The AE Top 500 Prices at Auction for 2007
Dorothea Lange's White Angel Breadline captures the Depression in its depressing reality. Courtesy of Sotheby's.
And now, for the top 10.
10. Sir Robert Dudley's great English sea atlas of 1661, Arcano del Mare. $824,000.
9. Large paper first edition from 1857 of Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal. $859,198.
8. De Architectura, written by Vitruvius Pollio in the first century B.C., herein edited by Johannes Sulpitius and published circa 1487. $881,000.
7. French translation of The Bestiary, an illustrated vellum manuscript circa 1280-90. $910,490.
6. The working draft manuscript from 1938-39 for Alcoholics Anonymous. $992,000.
5. Edward S. Curtis' North American Indian Portfolio, sixteen portfolios and sixteen text volumes from the early 20th century. $1,080,000.
4. Christopher Saxton's An Atlas of England and Wales, published 1579-90. $1,366,654.
3. Vita Christi, an illuminated English vellum manuscript in Latin circa 1190-1200 with a later supplement to become a devotional. $3,470,721.
2. Near the very end of the auction season, on December 13, a very un-antiquarian work became the auction price leader of 2007. The title is The Tales of Beedle the Bard, an autograph manuscript created very recently by Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling. $3,979,950.
1. Five days later, at the very end of the season, the top spot on the list was secured by one of the most important documents ever written, a 1297 manuscript copy of the Magna Carta. $21,321,000.
The complete AE Top 500 may be viewed by clicking here:
AE Top 500
Note: The Americana Exchange tracks sales at all of the large, and many other auction houses, some 140+ in all. Included in this list are books, manuscripts, and related ephemeral items. In certain cases, notably lithographs and photographs, we have had to use some discretion in deciding what should appear. With images and artwork, we have chosen to include it if the work was prepared for a book, presented in a book, or is primarily of historic value. Audubon's drawings appear. So do those of Albrecht Durer because of his close association with early printing. However, we leave out images primarily of artistic value and with no notable connection to books. As a result, we have excluded Rembrandt, Picasso and Warhol (whose printed art would fill the top 500 if included). We have included historic photography such as certain scenic early photographs of Ansel Adams and Depression era work of Dorothea Lange. Robert Mapplethorpe and Man Ray are not included.
