USIANA

Our October 29th auction presents 200 lots spanning several centuries of printed culture, manuscript material, and paper ephemera, with particular depth in modern American and European literature, the history of printing and typography, and the graphic arts. Among the highlights are three signed John Updike first editions in dust jackets, signed copies from Garcia Marquez and Joyce Carol Oates, a Cuala Press Rossi with its characteristic blue paper boards, and a remarkable 1935 Transition pamphlet bearing contributions from Braque, Matisse, and Tristan Tzara in response to Gertrude Stein. Collectors of illustrated and finely produced books will find the Skira Raynal volume on Fauvism and Expressionism with its tipped-in colour plates, the Ginzkey limited edition in decorated calf with mounted lithographs from Karl Scheibe’s workshop, and British Museum portfolios of illuminated manuscript reproductions alongside Dillmann’s scarce 1865 Ethiopic-Latin lexicon. The auction also rewards those drawn to ephemera and Americana: WWII ration books from Boston, an engraved Franklin rebus broadside, a rare woodcut-illustrated 1829 slavery narrative, Civil War election ballots, 1939 World’s Fair printed matter, and promotional booklets for the Hotel Astor and Hotel Knickerbocker that document early twentieth-century New York in vivid halftone and colour lithography. Latvian displaced persons’ children’s books from an Augsburg camp, Latvian Baptist publications, genealogical volumes on Macau and Portuguese India, and science fiction fanzines from Columbia University extend the reach of the sale into genuinely uncommon collecting territory.

Our November 2nd auction brings together 240 lots spanning an admirably wide range of subjects, from Virginia Woolf's first American edition of A Room of One's Own and a 1934 Esquire featuring Hemingway and Dos Passos to an extensive run of neurology and neuroanatomy monographs—including Beck's scarce two-volume study of the chimpanzee brain, Bechterew's Objektive Psychologie, and inscribed copies touching on neurosurgery and reflexology—that will reward specialist collectors and medical historians alike. New York and Connecticut history are well represented, with O'Callaghan's four-volume Documentary History of the State of New-York complete across separate lots with folding maps and plates, Democratic primary ledgers from Waterbury, and an irresistible 1906 folio of Men of Hartford in Cartoon bound in gilt-lettered suede. Among the more unusual items are a 1927 broadside invitation printed on metallic silver paper for a Night in a Persian Garden at the Yale Theater, a shipboard issue of L'Atlantique from aboard the S.S. Normandie dated February 1938, Deems Taylor's opera score inscribed to his wife, and John Henry Nash's marbled-board prospectus for a fine press Dante. Fine bindings, presentation copies, scarce offprints, Latvian diaspora publications, Art Nouveau illustrated books, and ephemera from steamship travel to vinegar valentines round out a sale that rewards both the focused specialist and the broadly curious collector.