Rare Books &c. at Auction This Week
Coming up on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 18-19, at Sotheby's London, The Erwin Tomash Library on the History of Computing, in 942 lots. I'll have more on this sale in the next print issue, but an expected highlight is a presentation copy of Galileo's Difesa (1607), inscribed by Galileo to Girolamo Cappello, a riformatore at Padua University. It is estimated at £300,000-400,000. A copy of the second issue of Galileo's first published work, on the operation of the geometrical compass, rates an estimate of £60,000-80,000.
Quite a few other lots of interest in this sale, including Ada Lovelace's translation of L. F. Menabrea's report on a series of lectures delivered by Charles Babbage in Turin. From the library of the Lovelace family at Horsley Towers, it is estimated at £6,000-8,000. A 12th-century Arabic arithmetical manuscript (pictured below) by Mubashir Ibn Ahmad al-Razi could sell for £20,000-30,000. The Macclesfield copy of William Pratt's Arithmeticall Jewell (1617) is estimated at £15,000-20,000.
On Thursday, September 20, PBA Galleries sells Rare Books & Manuscripts from the Library of James "Ted" Watkins, in 309 lots. A 1647 letter from Louise de Merillac de Gras to Vincent de Paul (both future saints), and a Sangorski & Sutcliffe illuminated manuscript of James Russell Lowell's The Vision of Sir Launfal (1908) share the top estimate of $10,000-15,000. A copy of the Lakeside Press Moby Dick, signed by Kent on the title page with a pencil sketch of the whale-tail motif used on the covers of the volumes, could fetch $7,000-10,000. A partial set (14 of 25 volumes) of the 1957-67 Robert Speller & Sons edition of Hough's American Woods is estimated at $2,000-3,000.
At Ader in Paris, also on Thursday, Livres de Photographies, in 289 lots. Top lots are expected to include Germaine Krull's Métal (1928), estimated at ??8,000-10,000; the first four numbers of the photographic quarterly Camera Work (1903), edited and published by Alfred Stieglitz (sold separately as lots 2-5); and a 1930 edition of Gérard de Nerval's Le Valois with photographs by Germaine Krull (??3,500-4,500).
