Kilmarnock Burns, Great "She" Bible, Robert E. Lee Letter: Auction Preview
John Webber etching of a dogsled team in Kamchatka, offered at Lyon & Turnbull this week.
Here are the sales I'll be watching this week:
At Chorley's Auctioneers on Tuesday, September 17, The Ombersley Court Library, in 520 lots. A rare copy of the Provisional Articles of the Treaty of Paris (1783) rates the top estimate at £10,000–15,000, and a copy of the 1794 first edition in English of Kahlert's gothic novel The Necromancer could sell for £2,000–3,000. John-James Chalon's Costume of Paris (1820–1821) is estimated at £1,200–1,800.
Ending on Tuesday at New England Book Auctions, 208 lots of 15th–18th Century Printing, Science & Americana, including the 1481 Basel edition of the Opuscula of Vincent of Beauvais ($2,000–3,000); and a 1546 Estienne Bible in Latin ($1,500–2,500).
University Archives sells 546 lots of Signed Autographs, Manuscripts, Books & Memorabilia on Wednesday, September 18. A July 4, 1863 letter from Robert E. Lee to George Gordon Meade in the aftermath of the Gettysburg battle could sell for $40,000–50,000, while an autograph outline by Dickens of the first six chapters of David Copperfield, to be used for one of his stage readings, is expected to fetch $30,000–40,000.
On Thursday, September 19, Forum Auctions holds a 435-lot online sale of Modern Literature, including a first impression copy of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale (£10,000–15,000); a first edition of Fleming's Live and Let Die (£1,500–2,000); and Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room (£1,500–2,000) previously in the library of TLS editor Bruce Richmond.
Lyon & Turnbull sell 300 lots of Books & Manuscripts on Thursday, with the Roderick Terry copy of Robert Burns' Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Kilmarnock, 1786) expected to lead the way at £50,000–60,000. John Snow's On the Mode of Communication of Cholera (London, 1855) could sell for £20,000–30,000. At the same estimate range is a set of the sixteen etchings by John Webber (1788–1792) to accompany the published account of Cook's third voyage, bound with other prints from the 1784 edition.
At Potter & Potter on Thursday, 670 lots related to Counterculture and the 1960s, including the original art for S. Clay Wilson's 1985 comic "Frank N. Stein" ($10,000–20,000); and a first printing of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham City Jail (1963), estimated at $4,000–6,000.
PBA Galleries sell Rare Books & Manuscripts on Thursday, in 87 lots. A copy of the second issue of the King James Bible, known as the "Great She Bible," is expected to realize $60,000–90,000, while a copy of the 1856 octavo edition of Audubon's Birds of America is estimated at $20,000–30,000. A first state copy of the 1632 Voyages of Samuel de Champlain could sell for $15,000–20,000.
