Current Events & Trends | March 2021 | Jeremy Dibbell

Rare Books &c. at Auction This Week

Courtesy of PBA Galleries

Slipcase for the 1822 game Traveller's Tour Through the United States, offered at PBA Galleries this week.

Here are the sales I'll be watching this week:

Aguttes will sell 261 lots of Autographes & Manuscrits on Monday, March 29, with most lots estimated at €2,500 or less.

A Fine Books and Manuscripts Online sale at Bonhams New York ends on Tuesday, March 30. The 109 lots include Andy Warhol's 25 Cats Name[d] Same and One Blue Pussy (1954), No. 110 of 190 stated copies, with a letter from Warhol to the original purchaser. This copy is estimated at $60,000–80,000. A copy of the Pancoucke edition of the Description de l'Egypte (1821–1830) in 38 volumes with all of the plates, could sell for $60,000–90,000. Audubon's male turkey from the Birds of America is estimated at $50,000–80,000. A first edition of Elliot's Monograph of the Felidae could sell for $40,000–60,000. Robert E. Lee's autograph copy of the will of his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, rates an estimate of $30,000–50,000.

Lark Mason Associates sells 206 lots of Rare Books and Incunabula, ending on Tuesday as well. Starting bids on this sale are mostly $10, so it might be possible to snag a bargain or two.

Another round of Travel & Sporting Books from the Library of Arnold "Jake" Johnson ends on Tuesday. The 218 items include a sketch and commonplace book by merchant William Prinsep, with two additional sketches of elephants by Charles D'Oyly ($2,000–3,000). A manuscript account of safaris of 1928 and 1929, led by J. A. Hunter and Andrew Fowle, with more than forty mounted photographs, had already reached $3,500 by Sunday afternoon.

Courtesy of PBA Galleries

Bonhams London will sell 150 lots of Fine Books and Manuscripts on Wednesday, March 31. Yeats' Poems (1949), No. 321 of 375 copies signed by Yeats, rates the top estimate at £1,000–2,000. A 1940 letter by a British lieutenant to his father, recounting the Dunkirk evacuation, could sell for £800–1,200.

Rounding out the week's sales, Americana – Travel & Exploration – World History – Cartography at PBA Galleries on Thursday, April 1. The 394 lots include a 1582 London edition of Castanheda's First Booke of the Historie of the Discoverie and Conquest of the East Indias ($15,000–25,000); at the same estimate is a mixed set of Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology (1808–1825), with all plates. A copy of the first geographic board game to feature the United States, the 1822 Traveller's Tour Through the United States, with the slipcase, is estimated at $10,000–15,000. And Eliot Porter's Portfolio One: The Seasons (1964), a set of twelve photographs published by the Sierra Club, could sell for $8,000–12,000.