Rare Books &c. at Auction This Week

A trio of sales on Thursday, August 5 to watch this week:

Forum Auctions sells 270 lots of Modern Literature, with a rather tired-looking set of first impressions of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy rating the top estimate at £2,000–3,000. An inscribed copy of the final Harry Potter book is estimated at £1,200–1,800, and a first edition of Ian Fleming's Dr. No could sell for £800–1,200. Other lots of interest include a shelf lot of 47 titles by or about Arthur Machen (£600–800); a collection of some 70 Booker Prize-listed titles (£400–500); and Mervyn Peake's copy of Edward F. Strange's Japanese Colour Prints (£300–400).

Swann Galleries will sell Vintage Posters on Thursday, in 365 lots. Charles Loupot's 1919 poster for Les Cigarettes Mekka is expected to lead the way at $15,000–20,000. Plinio Codognato's rare Cicli Fiat design from around 1910 rates an estimate of $12,000–18,000. An intriguing Jean Dupas poster from 1930, "Where is this bower beside the silver Thames?" could sell for $10,000–15,000. A 1923 Dada event poster designed by Kurt Schwitters and Theo van Doesburg rates the same estimate. A rare L. N. Britton WWI warning poster could fetch $8,000–12,000.

And at PBA Galleries on Thursday, 445 lots of Fine Literature – Beats & the Counterculture. A carbon typescript of Ross Macdonald's Sleeping Beauty, inscribed by Macdonald to collector Marvin Epstein, is expected to top the sale at $8,000–12,000. A first edition, second state copy of Steinbeck's The Moon is Down, signed by the author, is estimated at $3,000–5,000. The same estimate is assigned to a first issue of Nabokov's Lolita, a complete 68-volume set of Johnson's Works of the English Poets (1779–1781), and a set of the Nonesuch Dickens.