Heritage April Rare Books Auction Spans the Dawn of Printing to Sagan’s <i>Cosmos</i>
NEW YORK—From the dawn of printing to the edges of the universe, Heritage Auctions’ April 8-9 Rare Books Signature® Auction runs the gamut. The auction will take place at 301 Park Ave, Duke of Windsor Suite, 4th floor.
The bookends of the auction take the form of the amazing Charlotte Guillard Collection from the Krown & Spellman Collection (estimate $100,000+)—a grouping of 40 exceedingly rare titles printed and published by the legendary Frenchwoman between 1502 and her death in 1569—and the astounding, influential Jon Lomberg Cosmos artwork archive (estimate $25,000+)—an incredible, extensive grouping of artwork, concept art, sketches and assorted ephemera—relating to Lomberg’s longtime collaboration with astronomer Carl Sagan on the groundbreaking 1970s television show Cosmos.
“This auction lets collectors reach back in the past, to the earliest days of the printed word, and simultaneously look forward to Sagan’s enlightened vision of an interconnected galaxy,” said James Gannon, Director of Rare Books at Heritage Auctions. “What they both share is a dedication to fostering scientific education and inquiry and the fact that both are rare and important cultural artifacts tying together distinctly different eras.”
A first octavo, first complete and first American edition of Audubon’s Birds of America (estimate $50,000+), perhaps the most spectacular work of Ornithology ever published, is expected to draw intense collector interest, while an early manuscript draft of Saul Bellow's second novel, The Victim (estimate $50,000+), offers a substantially different story than the final published version, printed by Vanguard Press in 1947.
Also of significance on the manuscript front is a D.H. Lawrence handwritten Holograph Manuscript of The Woman Who Rode Away, circa 1924 (estimate $15,000+), consisting of 44-1/2 pages in Lawrence’s own hand, written in ink with additional holograph corrections, re-writes and textual insertions.
“This is a fascinating look into the creative process of one of the twentieth century's greatest and most controversial British authors,” said Gannon.
As a part of its April auction, Heritage will also offer The Larry McMurtry Collection of H.G. Wells, roughly 1,000 books from the collection of the Pulitzer Prize and Oscar?? winning writer of Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show—who is equally famous in his own right as a used bookseller—by or relating to legendary sci-fi pioneer. All of the books are from McMurtry’s personal collection.
Among the many offerings is a very special edition of H.G. Wells, Tales of Space and Time, London: Harper & Brothers, 1900, an association copy from Wells to Henry James, with an estimate of $7,500+.
First edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, one of 750 numbered copies printed on handmade paper: Estimate $15,000+.
First Latin Edition of Galileo's Landmark Dialogo: Estimate $7,000+.
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, New York: Random House, 1985: Estimate $5,000+.
First Edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs The Cave Girl in the Very Rare Original Dust Jacket: Estimate $2,500+.
Heritage Auctions is the largest auction house founded in the United States and the world’s third largest, with annual sales of more than $900 million, and 900,000+ online bidder members. For more information about Heritage Auctions, and to join and receive access to a complete record of prices realized, with full-color, enlargeable photos of each lot, please visit HA.com.
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