Other major highights include:
* Strutz’s copy with dust jacket of The Great Gatsby inscribed “For D. L. Shelton / from his Sincerely / F Scott Fitzgerald / Feb 1927”
* a first edition presentation copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 The Hobbit which the author gifted to friends, writing inside “Charles & Dorothy Moore / from. / J.R.R.T / with love / September 1937”
* Tolkien’s 1949 Farmer Giles of Ham, with an autograph letter to its recipient, also the dedicatee
* Katherine Anne Porter’s 1962 Ship of Fools, twice inscribed to its dedicatee publisher Barbara Harrison Wescott
* Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1878 An Inland Voyage, with a lengthy inscription from Stevenson to his mother, that reads in part “My dear Mother / May I present you with an unworthy grandchild? I am sure it would have been fifty times better, if I had been fifty times like you; and I am sure, if it had been a hundred times worse, you would have given it a kind welcome for my sake. So be it in this, and in all.”
* Ernest Hemingway’s rare first book, Three Stories & Ten Poems (1923), inscribed to the journal publisher in Paris of some of his earliest appearances
* Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854), inscribed to his literary executor and hiking companion Harrison Gray Otis Blake
* Herman Melville’s first collection of poetry, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), inscribed to one of the subject of one of its poems
“Strutz knew his texts thoroughly, he spent endless hours in his specially designed library among his books,” Wahlgren said. “Laid in nearly every book we worked on, we would find a little slip of paper such as hotel stationary with Bill’s meticulous pencil notes citing favorite meaningful lines from those books which provide a glimpse into his mind, and into what struck him most profoundly.”
Strutz was especially keen on poetry and verse, including the works of Robert Frost, and John Keats who is represented in an extremely rare autograph letter, as well as a copy of his Poems (1817) in its original boards. His favorite poem by his favorite American poet William Cullen Bryant was To a Waterfowl. Over several decades he added the first book appearance of the poem, an original fair copy manuscript, as well as the extremely rare first printed appearance in a journal, which turned out to be his very last purchase in late 2023.
The auction also includes a copy of Lewis and Clark’s History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark (1814), and inscribed books from Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Presidents John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln.
Among the manuscript material included in the auction are items from Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, including Hawthorne's autograph manuscript of his story The Lily’s Quest from 1839.
Strutz frequently opened his home to fellow bibliophiles and scholars for whom this essential, rare material was unavailable elsewhere. “He knew the joy he got out of collecting, and it was personal to him, but he understood the demand and desire of other collectors,” Wahlgren said. “He would show his collection to scholars. He liked to share it, although Bismarck wasn’t the easiest place to reach. I was astounded when I saw his library for the first time. It exceeded its reputation, which I had heard whispers about for several decades. There’s depth in his collection we don’t normally encounter anymore, and his love for the books on his shelves was apparent.”
