Don Quixote Editions Lead Swann Galleries Spring Fine Books Offering
Don Quixote editions
Early printed books, literature, and artist books featured in Swann Galleries’ latest Fine Books auction which was dominated by editions of Don Quixote. Leading the sale was a 1608 third Madrid Cuesta edition, sold for $106,250. Other editions of note included:
- two octavo volumes of lifetime Brussels editions, in Spanish, 1611 and 1616, bound in uniform full 19th century red morocco binding ($47,500)
- a first American edition, in English, published in 1803 ($17,500 over a $2,000 - $3,000 estimate)
- a second Lisbon edition from 1605, censored by the Holy Inquisition ($15,000)
Works from the late Stanley DeForest Scott sold to benefit the Library of the Grolier Club included a unique, voluminously extra-illustrated edition of Napoleon Bonaparte and William Milligan Sloane‘s Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, in 12 volumes, which sold for $45,000, as well as a first edition of Jacob Christoph Trew‘s Plantae Selectae quarum Imagines ad Exemplaria Naturalia (Nuremberg, 1750-1773, $23,750) and a rare trial proof of the first edition of Charles Dickens‘ A Christmas Carol (London, 1844, $16,250).
Other highlights included:
* two books from Ernest Hemingway’s library, Scouting on Two Continents, 1927, by Maj. Frederick Russel Burnham and The Cat Wears a Noose, 1944, by D.B. Olsen, sold together for $10,000. Additionally under the hammer was The Best Short Stories of 1923, Boston, 1924, edited by Edward J. O’Brien which included Hemingway’s first book published in the United States, My Old Man. Inscribed by the author “First book published in U.S. Name misspelled as added attraction” it went for $18,750.
* a first London paper edition of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, London, 1997, which sold for $10,000
* a limited edition of Ten Works by Ten Painters, Hartford, 1964 ($11,250)
* a first separate edition of Charles Darwin’s Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the various countries visited by H.M.S. Beagle, London, 1839, sold for $10,625.
