USIANA

Our October 19 auction presents 200 lots drawn from a pleasingly varied range of collecting interests, with particular strengths in Americana, British cultural history, illustrated books, and twentieth-century literature. The Lakeside Classics are well represented across multiple lots and periods, complemented by runs from the Britain in Pictures series and the Imprint Society, while students of fine press printing will note a facsimile of the Kelmscott Chaucer and a signed limited edition of Max Beerbohm’s Works numbered 121. Literary highlights include a first edition of Nelson Algren’s National Book Award-winning The Man with the Golden Arm in its dust jacket, three early James Baldwin titles, Aldous Huxley’s collected works from Chatto & Windus, and unbound production signatures for Anne Rice’s The Queen of the Damned — an unusual survival. Art and illustration are generously represented throughout, from loose chromolithographic design plates drawn from Dekorative Vorbilder and The Art Decorator to Peter Beard’s Longing for Darkness, Horst’s Photographs of a Decade, Heinrich Zimmer’s two-volume Art of Indian Asia in the Bollingen Series, and individual issues of the Paris satirical journal Le Rire featuring lithographs by Toulouse-Lautrec and Vallotton.

Our October 15 auction presents 200 lots spanning an exceptionally broad range of collecting interests, from American literary firsts and historical manuscripts to fine bindings, illustrated art books, and ephemera. Highlights among the literary offerings include a first edition of John Cheever’s The Wapshot Scandal in dust jacket, the first volume of Grant’s Personal Memoirs in original publisher’s cloth, and a typewritten production script of Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit — an uncommon piece of theatrical history. Bibliophiles will find much to consider in the fine press and binding department, with a two-volume Nonesuch Press Bible featuring engravings by Stephen Gooden, a Peter Maverick-engraved bookplate for the Erasmus Hall Library in a full calf binding, a handsomely bound inscribed copy of Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Crusade for Pan-Europe, and Chagall’s Glasmalereien für Jerusalem with original color lithographs. The auction is further distinguished by strong holdings in American history and regional studies — including Connecticut tercentenary pamphlets, Massachusetts Historical Society proceedings, and works on Native American and Civil War history — alongside Judaica, Holocaust studies, astronomy, horology, California postcard collections, vintage greeting cards, and a Hermann Bollmann axonometric pictorial map of New York City, together reflecting the depth and variety that characterizes a well-seasoned general antiquarian sale.