Upcoming Highlights: Printed & Manuscript Americana

At Auction April 16

Complete Catalogue

 
This sale includes a dramatic Texan diary by William Farrar Smith, commanding an expedition to find the best trail from San Antonio to El Paso in 1849; and important Virginia material, most notably an issue of the Virginia Gazette with news of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Following up on our recent Holzer collection, we will offer quality Lincolniana, including a newspaper extra documenting the assassination, and a large oil portrait by Matthew Henry Wilson–the last artist Lincoln sat for.
 
Other highlights include the only known auction appearance of the first piece of baseball sheet music, The Baseball Polka, from 1858; a beautiful extra-illustrated set of Lossing’s Pictorial History of the Civil War; and a whaling journal kept by a captain’s wife in the 1850s.

Manuscripts

Lot 200: William Farrar Smith, manuscript diary of an expedition from San Antonio to El Paso, 1849. Estimate $30,000 to $40,000.

Lot 229: Diary kept by Alida Taber, wife of the whaling captain, recording two whaling expeditions, 1853-61. Estimate $4,000 to $6,000.

Broadsides

Lot 115: Abraham Lincoln assassination, Advertiser & Tribune letterpress broadside extra naming Booth as the murderer, Detroit, 1865. Estimate $5,000 to $7,500.

Mexican Imprints

 
Early Mexican printing includes important works such as Vasco de Puga’s important 1563 legal tract Philippus Hispaniarum et Indiarum Rex; Juan Navarro’s 1604 Liber in quo quatuor passiones Christi Domini continentur, the first music by a New World composer printed in the New World; and the 1677 Villancicos que se cantaron en los maitines del gloriosissimo Padre S. Pedro Nolasco by the Mexican poetess Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
 

Lot 274: Juana Inés de la Cruz, Villancicos que se cantaron en los maitines del gloriosissimo Padre S. Pedro Nolasco, first edition, Mexico, 1677. Estimate $30,000 to $40,000.

Lot 257: Juan Navarro, Liber in quo quatuor passiones Christi Domini continentur, Mexico, 1604. Estimate $8,000 to $12,000.

Mexican Manuscripts

 
Mexican manuscripts range from a 1529 royal decree protecting the Mexican estate of Hernán Cortés while he was in Spain, to a volume of manuscript essays by the popular early-twentieth-century poet Amado Nervo.
 

Lot 313: Manuscript royal decree protecting the Mexican estate of Hernán Cortés, 1529. Estimate $12,000 to $18,000.

Latin Americana

 
Outside of Mexico, we offer the first full-length book printed in Guatemala, the Explicatio apologetica nonnullarum propositonum from 1663; Diego Rocha’s 1681 book on the culture of the Indians, Tratado unico, y singular del origen de los Indios occidentales del Piru; and an extensive sixteenth-century file on efforts to recover the treasure looted by English privateer John Oxenham in Panama.
 

Lot 244: Payo de Ribera, Explicatio apologetica nonnullarum propositonum, first full-length book printed in Guatemala, 1663. Estimate $5,000 to $7,500.

Other Highlights

Lot 194: J.R. Blodgett, The Baseball Polka, printed sheet music, Buffalo, 1858. Estimate $1,000 to $1,500.

 
 
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