Auction Highlights: Fine Books — October 24, 2024

At Auction Thursday, October 24 at 10:30 AM ET

Catalogue & Bidding

This fall’s sale promises to tempt with bibliographic rarities from before the invention of movable type through the twentieth century. Fine, limited edition art books will be featured alongside early printed books, fine illustrated and children’s books, and modern firsts.

We are pleased to offer three original letters written by Louisa May Alcott to a friend of her deceased youngest sister, May, about May’s daughter Lulu, updating her on the little girl’s growth. The auction will also feature a final section of material from Ken Rapoport’s collection, with a strong showing of early printed Spanish literature and the chivalric tales and picaresque roots that inspired Cervantes. A new collection strong in early English literature includes a second folio of Shakespeare, and early works of Milton, Chaucer, Drayton and Donne, among others. 

William Shakespeare, Second Folio, 1632. Estimate $120,000 to $180,000.

Modern literature fans will have the chance to purchase a first edition of Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time. We are also proud to present an exciting find: a photo album compiled by a fellow Red Cross volunteer who served in the Ambulance Service with Hemingway during WWI. It contains unpublished images of Hemingway and his fellow volunteers from the time they shipped overseas, through their service in Italy, and includes an image of the injured Papa in his Milan hospital bed.

Ernest Hemingway, WWI Photo Album Documenting his Volunteer Service in the Ambulance Corps, photographs captured between 23 May 1918 and 17 February 1919; subsequently compiled by Percy D. Johnson. Estimate $20,000 to $30,000.
Ernest Hemingway, in our time, Limited First Edition; One of 170 Copies Printed, Paris: Three Mountains Press, 1924. Estimate $20,000 to $30,000.
James I of Aragon’s Chronica, 1557. First edition, large paper copy in deluxe binding. Estimate $7,000 to $9,000.
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, First Edition, Signed & Inscribed, the Brown Family Copy, Philadelphia & New York: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1960. Estimate $10,000 to $15,000.
Johannes Hevelius, Selenographia: Sive, Lunae Descriptio; atque Accurata, tam Macularum eius, quam Mottum Diversorum, aliarumque Omnium Vicissitudinum, Phasiumque, Telescopii ope Deprehensarum, Delineatio, Danzig: Autoris sumtibus, Typis Hunefeldianus, 1647. Estimate $15,000 to $20,000.
Agostino Nifo’s De Regnandi Peritia ad Carolum VI, 1523. The only lifetime publication of text from Machiavelli’s The Prince, in a Hagué binding. Estimate $25,000 to $35,000.
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, inscribed First English Edition, London: The Egoist Ltd., 1917. Estimate $15,000 to $20,000.

Keep in Touch

Sign-up for Email Updates
Download the Swann Galleries App
October 3, 2024
Author:
Category: Fine Books & Manuscripts
Tags: