Auction Report: October Preview

A couple October sales are already behind us:

- On 2 October Bonhams sold Early Printing and English Books to 1640, in 285 lots. The top price of £49,250 went (auction title notwithstanding) to a volume containing two fourteenth-century Franciscan texts. The Aldine Herodotus of 1502 sold for £33,650.

- Also on 2 October, Swann Galleries sold Printed and Manuscript Americana, in 528 lots. A large collection of the Civil War correspondence of Capt. Isaac Plumb of Sherburne, NY, along with three Civil War swords, sold for $55,200. A copy of McKenney and Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America fetched $38,400.

- A Charles Leander Weed photograph from Yosemite made $374,500 today at Sotheby's photographs sale.

- At Bloomsbury on 4 October, a sale entitled Red China, 1921-1976, in 287 lots.

- Bloomsbury holds a Bibliophile Sale on 5 October, in 268 lots.

- Christie's London sells Travel, Science, and Natural History on 9 October, in 341 lots. A thermometer signed by Fahreinheit himself rates the top estimate, £70,000-100,000. Lots of neat Antarctica-related things up for grabs in this one.

- Bonhams San Francisco sells Fine Books and Manuscripts on 10 October, in 423 lots. Among the expected highlights: a typescript of an unpublished Timothy Leary work, estimated at $30,000-50,000.

- Swann Galleries will sell Art, Press and Illustrated Books on 11 October, in 367 lots.

- At PBA Galleries on 11 October, Fine Literature, Americana Bibliography, and Fine Books in All Fields, for a total of 368 lots.

- On 18 October at Bloomsbury, Literature, Manuscripts, Travel and Natural History Books will be up for grabs, in 624 lots.

- At Swann Galleries on 23 October, Aldine Imprints & Early Printed Books from the Library of Kenneth Rapoport, in 119 lots. As you'd expect, there are some real goodies here, but the lot with the top estimate is a copy of the Aldine Theocritus with contemporary hand coloring. It's estimated at $40,000-60,000.

- Bloomsbury will sell Modern First Editions: The Collection of Clive Hirschhorn on 25 October, in 416 lots.

- No preview yet for the 25 October PBA Galleries sale of California & Its Ranchos: The John C. Broome Library.

- Christie's Paris sells Emilie du Chatelet manuscripts and books on 29 October, in 58 lots. A partial manuscript of her translation of Newton's Principia rates the top estimate, at ??400,000-600,000. They'll also sell Importants Livres Anciens, Livres D'Artistes et Manuscrits on the same day, in 114 lots. A copy of Redouté's Les Roses is estimated at ??450,000-650,000.

- On 30 October at Christie's London, The Le Vivier Library of Sporting Books and Modern First Editions, in 333 lots. Wynken de Worde's 1518 The boke of hawkyinge and Huntynge and fysshynge could fetch £80,000-120,000.

- At Christie's Paris on 30 October, Collection d'un Amateur Bibliophile, in 195 lots.