Focus On Women: June 2, 2022 Auction Highlights

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Lot 13: Helena Bochoráková-Dittrichová, Mého Detství Drevoryty, Prague, 1929. Estimate $4,000 to $6,000.

Swann’s second annual Focus on Women sale, as its name suggests, is an opportunity to emphasize women’s experiences and contributions to literature, science, art, politics, and thought. With published and manuscript material from the hand-press period, through the work of living artists, bidders will have a chance to bid on photographs, prints, books, and more material, while remembering women’s stories through time.

Lot 42: Amelia Earhart, twelve photographs of events around her crash on Ford Island, 1937. Estimate $300 to $500. 

Celebrating Black Women

This year’s Focus On Women sale contains the work of a number of significant Black women. Beginning with a rare Phillis Wheatley poem, and continuing into the nineteenth century, with Sojourner Truth’s autobiography. The sale also includes many literary prize winners and first editions from the twentieth century.

Lot 184: Phillis Wheatley, Recollection, to Miss A_ M_, Humbly Inscribed by the Authoress as printed in The London Magazine, London, 1772. Estimate $1,500 to $2,500. 

We are pleased to offer Georgia Johnson’s Bronze, Nella Larsen’s Passing, Gwendolyn Brooks’s A Street in Bronzeville, and a number of first editions by Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. Black activists and artists are also represented, including material related to Angela Davis, Rosa Parks, and Josephine Baker.

At auction June 2: From left to right: Lot 84: Georgia Douglas Johnson, Bronze: A Book of Verse, signed and inscribed first edition, Boston, 1922. Estimate $4,000 to $6,000; Lot 103: Nella Larsen, Passing, first edition, New York & London, 1929. Estimate $600 to $800; Lot 17: Gwendolyn Brooks, A Street in Bronzeville, first edition, New York, 1945. Estimate $400 to $600.
Lot 33: Angela Davis, This Black Woman is a Heroine!! Free Angela Now!!! Don’t Wait Until She is Dead to Honor!, illustrated by Dana C. Chandler, Jr. Boston, 1960. Estimate $600 to $900. 
At auction June 2: From left to right: Lot 141: Rosa Parks, four press photos, 1980-90. Estimate $300 to $500; Lot 130: Toni Morrison, Jazz, signed first edition with uncorrected proof, New York, 1992. Estimate $300 to $500.

Related Reading

Devon Eastland on Caroline Schimmel & the Challenges of Creating Diverse Collections Driven by Women

Travel Diaries, Unpublished Letters, Manuscripts & More

In an effort to preserve the stories of all women, we are also pleased to include lots documenting the lives Christine La Barraque, Norma Jean Croy, the Harvard College house cleaning team, and unique manuscript material created by people obscured by a male-dominated lens. Through travel diaries and unpublished letters the lives and characters of women come back into focus.

Lot 78: Harvard College’s House Cleaning Team, salt print, circa 1863. Estimate $300 to $500. 
At auction June 2: From left to right: Lot 22: Claude Cahun, Aveux Non Avenus, Paris, 1930. Estimate $2,000 to $3,000; Lot 15: Anne Bradstreet, Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, full of Delight, Boston, 1758. Estimate $1,000 to $2,000. 
Lot 77: Laura Elizabeth Sterne Harrison, manuscript diary of several voyages Including an overland trip to California and a climbing trip to Mount Shasta, 1872-73. Estimate $1,000 to $1,500.

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May 6, 2022
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Category: Focus On Women
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