Category: Past auctions

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 October 26 auction presents 200 lots spanning five centuries of books, manuscripts, maps, ephemera, and original art, with particular depth in fine bindings, illustrated works, and the more colourful corners of twentieth-century print culture. Collectors of literary firsts will find Hemingway’s *For Whom the Bell Tolls* in its 1940 Scribner first edition, Thackeray’s *Pendennis* in original two-volume cloth, and a first American edition of Daisy Ashford’s *The Young Visiters* complete with its scarce dust jacket and J. M. Barrie preface, while signed Franklin Library productions by Faulkner, Bourjaily, and Auchincloss offer finely bound reading copies for the shelf. The cartographic holdings are equally varied, ranging from a hand-coloured 1790s New York state map and a Kiepert *Atlas Antiquus* to a nineteenth-century Litchfield County atlas sheet with individual landholder names. Erotica and transgressive imprints appear in some strength — from Girodias’s Olympia Press anthologies and a signed limited Poe translated by Baudelaire with Dubout lithographs to an 1895 Paris first edition on hashish and occultism — sitting companionably alongside devotional items in gilt morocco, an Elbert Hubbard Roycroft suede binding with metal clasp, a Virgil *Aeneis* of 1701 concealing a fore-edge painting, and a sixteenth-century hand-coloured herbal leaf. Original art, postcards, photographs, and ephemera round out the sale, including a signed Bette Davis silver gelatin portrait, Sandoz

Our October 22 auction presents 200 lots spanning an admirably broad range of collecting fields, from antiquarian pamphlets and private press rarities to modern first editions, ephemera, and the decorative arts. Among the highlights are a 1933 Cuala Press edition of Rossi’s Pilgrimage in the West, a complete woodcuts monograph on Dürer accompanied by exhibition catalogues, Skira’s tipped-in plate volume on Matisse, Munch, and Rouault, and three volumes of Forjaz’s Famílias Macaenses — a scarce genealogical record of Macau’s Portuguese families. Signed and inscribed copies appear throughout, including Updike’s A Month of Sundays and Problems, Mosley’s Gone Fishin’, Dalton’s Miguel Marmol, and Oates and Doctorow firsts, while García Márquez’s first American editions of Love in the Time of Cholera and Chronicle of a Death Foretold anchor a strong modern literature section. The auction also rewards specialists in typography and printing history, needlework and textile arts, New York City ephemera, Latvian displaced persons publications, early cinema and theatre programmes, and World War II rationing material, with curiosities ranging from a Kemble engraved chart of Columbus’s Atlantic voyages to a 1917 Ballet Intime promotional folder bearing photographs of Adolf Bolm and Roshanara.

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.