• 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

Book Catalogue Reviews - March - 2018 Issue

Rare Americana (and a little more) from David M. Lesser Antiquarian Books

Rare Americana-plus.

David M. Lesser Fine Antiquarian Books has released their Catalogue 160 of Rare Americana. To be accurate, we have to note there are a few British items in here this time, but they relate either to America or problems experienced in that nation (slavery). We also note a lot of material related to the law. These aren't legalistic treatises, but some are related to state laws and constitutions, particularly from their earliest days, while others involve trials. There are a surprising number of libel trials here, Americans smearing each other, while others rise to theft and, worse yet, murder. Trials don't often bring out the best in us. Here are a few samples of what you will find in this latest collection of Americana-plus.

 

We begin with a sensational trial from 1846 in Boston. Many believed someone got away with murder. Item 141 is a pamphlet published by the Boston Daily Mail: The Trial of Albert J. Tirrell, Charged with the Murder of Mrs. Maria A. Bickford... Tirrell came from a family of reasonable means but with a reputation for wild behavior. He was married with two children, but took up with the beautiful Maria Bickford, who took up with him, but refused to quit her high-paying job as a prostitute. It enabled her to live well. One night after a visit from a customer, Tirrell came to her room, apparently displeased. Bickford was later found dead, her throat sliced ear to ear, while a couple of small fires had been set in the brothel. This is not all that unusual a case, but what makes it notable was the defense. Tirrell's parents were able to hire the noted and flamboyant defense attorney Rufus Choate. His defense was surprising. He claimed that if Tirrell did it, he did it in his sleep. Tirrell was supposedly a sleepwalker, and sleepwalkers regularly do things like practically slicing off someone's head. At least, Choate convinced the jury this was reasonable. The jury found Tirrell innocent. The prosecution didn't believe the theory and later tried Tirrell for arson from the same incident, but once again Choate got him off. Priced at $850.

 

Ten years earlier, a trial of a very different sort took place in Washington City, The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M. D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers... The charge was that Crandall was encouraging a revolt by slaves and free blacks. Crandall was the brother of a noted northern abolitionist and carried some such literature though he was not intimately involved in the movement. His prosecution was more of a warning to northern abolitionists visiting the nation's capital not to take the protection of free speech too literally there. The prosecution played on the potential for racial prejudice in the white jury, but they weren't buying. They acquitted the doctor. Sadly, Dr. Crandall was held in jail awaiting trial where he contracted tuberculosis, from which he died three years later. And there is one more very sad thing about this story. The prosecutor was Francis Scott Key, author of the Star Spangled Banner. Key held a narrow interpretation for his words "land of the free." Item 46. $2,500.

 

This next item isn't about a trial, though it is related to one. Item 58 is Christ's Promise to the Penitent Thief. A Sermon Preached the Lord's-Day Before the Execution of Levi Ames, Who Suffered Death for Burglary, Oct. 21, 1773. Execution seems a fairly stiff penalty for burglary, though it was for a substantial sum, but Ames already had a bad reputation, a slow learner from past punishments. However, he apparently did recall his old biblical learning as the date of execution approached, seeking redemption before it was too late. It was at Ames' request that Pastor Andrew Eliot delivered this sermon. He listened attentively, and one wonders whether Eliot's words made him feel better. "Unhappy young man!" intoned Eliot, "You have been an atrocious sinner... I pity you still more, when I consider you as an offender against the great God, and in danger of his eternal wrath." That doesn't sound too comforting, though Eliot eased the pain by pointing out that "Repentance is never too late." On the gallows, Ames warned others to learn from his mistake, evidently now fully repentant. $1,000.

 

While Eliot preached this sermon before Ames, the clergyman who spent the most time with Ames during his last days, and accompanied him to the gallows, was Rev. Samuel Stillman. Stillman, along with Eliot, would become leading supporters of the American Revolution. Stillman was a particularly influential voice in Boston. He would later be one of Massachusetts' delegates to the convention that ratified the U. S. Constitution. Item 131 is A Sermon Preached Before the Honorable Council, and the Honorable House of Representatives of the State of Massachusetts-Bay... on May 26, 1779. In his sermon, Stillman advocated the separation of church and state and the abolition of slavery. He also warned the congregants, "Let us not amuse ourselves with a prospect of peace, and in consequence thereof abate in our preparations for war." $1,000.

 

This theory is not one promoted in Texas history books, and while not entirely true, it is not entirely false either. It is not one appealing to those who celebrate the Texas Revolution. This is a contemporary account (1836) by Benjamin Lundy (published anonymously), entitled The War in Texas; a Review of Facts and Circumstances, Showing that this Contest is the Result of a Long Premeditated Crusade Against the Government, Set on Foot by Slaveholders, Land Speculators &c. with the View of Re-Establishing, Extending, and Perpetuating the System of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Republic of Mexico. Lundy charges that it is "settled design, among the slaveholders of this country, (and with land speculators and slave-traders) to wrest the large and valuable territory of Texas from the Mexican Republic, in order to re-establish the System of Slavery; to open a vast and profitable Slave-Market therein; and, ultimately to annex it to the United States." Undoubtedly, different participants in the revolution had differing aims, but all of this would come to pass in what had previously been a land where slavery was outlawed. Item 89. $750.

 

Item 118 is an apparently unrecorded enlistment certificate from Connecticut for the Revolutionary War. In print, with the name handwritten, it says "I, Christopher Sherman, have this Day voluntarily inlisted myself as a Soldier in the Army of the United States of America." This is one of the earlier instances of the use of this new name for the nation, adopted September 1776. Sherman agrees "to serve during the present War, unless sooner discharged." The exact date is not given, but it is from January 1777. Evidently, Sherman didn't take this pledge too seriously as he shows up in the payroll sheets for January-June as having deserted on either January 10 or 18. For those less desirous of a deserter's enlistment certificate, item 119 is a similar one for John Chatfield. Chatfield must have lived up to his pledge as he he began receiving a Revolutionary War pension in 1821. $7,500 each.

 

David M. Lesser Fine Antiquarian Books may be reached at 203-389-8111 or dmlesser@lesserbooks.com. Their website is www.lesserbooks.com.

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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