Category: Past auctions

This Thursday’s sale of 280 lots ranges impressively across neurology and the history of science, Virginia Woolf and Alfred Adler, and brings together a genuinely diverse gathering of rare books, manuscripts, and ephemera that rewards collectors with varied tastes. Medical and scientific holdings are particularly strong, from R. Lindsay Rea’s 1941 Neuro-Ophthalmology and Emil Seletz’s Surgery of Peripheral Nerves to specialist volumes on spectroscopy, radiobiology, and nuclear data, while the history of science thread runs through Thomas Muir’s four-volume Theory of Determinants and Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos. Americana collectors will find Morris Birkbeck’s 1818 Notes on a Journey in America in half calf, Clarence B. Moore’s presentation copies on Gulf Coast and Ouachita Valley archaeology, and Henry Keppel’s Expedition to Borneo with its folding map, alongside fine bindings including a full morocco William Cullen Bryant and a limp morocco Episcopal Hymnal. Art and design are well represented by Michel Tapie’s folio on Sofu Teshigahara, the Picasso lithographs paired with Balzac’s Hidden Masterpiece, Roland Penrose on Miró, and multiple advertising art annuals, while literary ephemera — from uncorrected proofs of Pablo Neruda to Hudson Review issues and mid-century little magazines — round out a sale that consistently rewards the specialist and the generalist alike.

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.

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.