Books &c. at Auction This Week

A return to action in the auction rooms this week, with two sales on Thursday, January 10:
  

Forum Auctions holds an online sale of Books and Works on Paper, in 174 lots. A complete-to-date set of the definitive edition of the works of Voltaire (121 volumes published between 1969 and 2018) is estimated at £1,500-2,000, while a copy of the 38-volume Centenary Limited Edition of Churchill's works could fetch £1,000-1,500. A collection of 155 vellum-bound (or at least vellum-spined) volumes is estimated at £600-800. Other items of interest here include a New Jersey manuscript receipt book from the 1820s (£200-300); a large collection of bookseller and auction catalogues (£200-300); and a collection of about 600 20th-century Portuguese bookplates (£200-300; one pictured). There are also several large lots of bibliographies and other bibliographical publications.

At PBA Galleries, Literature of the 19th & 20th Centuries, with the Glenn Todd Collection of Arion Press & Beat Literature, in 433 lots. The top-estimated lot is the Arion Press edition of W. B. Yeats' Poems (1990), with an additional suite of six etchings by Richard Diebenkorn ($15,000-25,000). Glenn Todd's copy of the Arion Press Moby-Dick (1979) is estimated at $10,000-15,000. The Arion Press edition of Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste (1994) rates a $7,000-10,000 estimate.

Beyond the impressive Arion Press selection, expected highlights from this sale include a rebacked first printing of Tom Sawyer ($4,000-6,000); a signed first edition of John Williams' Stoner ($2,000-3,000); a first edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin with a later laid-in inscription by Stowe ($2,000-3,000). A complete collection of Sue Grafton's Alphabet series, with some related ephemera, is also estimated at $2,000-3,000. Lots 337-443 are being sold without reserve.