Rare Books &c. at Auction This Week
Quite a busy auction week coming up:
On Tuesday, October 23, Mexico City auction house Morton Subastas sells Libros y Documentos: Colección de un Bibliófilo, in 261 lots. Brasseur and Waldeck's Monuments Anciens du Mexique Palenque et Autres Ruines de l'Ancienne Civilisation du Mexique (1866) rates the top estimate, at 500,000-800,000 pesos (roughly $26,000-41,000). A 1585 Mexico City imprint, Estatutos Generales de Barcelona, could fetch 300,000-400,000 pesos ($16,000-21,000).
Also on Tuesday, Lettres et Manuscrits Autographes at Ader in Paris, in 453 lots. A George Sand manuscript is estimated at ??12,000-15,000.
There are some books and manuscripts among the 255 lots in the Arts of the Islamic World sale at Sotheby's London on Wednesday, October 24. A thirteenth-century two-volume copy of Ibn Sinna (Avicenna)'s Canon of Medicine is estimated at £80,000-120,000, while a volume of surgeon Ibn al-Quff's commentary on the Canon, also from the thirteenth century, could fetch £70,000-90,000. A manuscript of two astronomical works collected together and copied around 1295 is estimated at £50,000-70,000 (pictured above).
Bonhams Edinburgh hosts the Sporting Sale on Wednesday, in 391 lots. There are some books on angling and so forth at the start of the sale.
Swann Galleries sells Rare & Important Travel Posters on Thursday, October 25, in 232 lots. Emil Cardinaux's St. Moritz (1918) could fetch $15,000-20,000, and sharing estimates of $12,000-18,000 are Burkhard Mangold's Winter in Davos (1914) and Philip Zec's striking By Night Train to Scotland (1932).
Forum Auctions has an online sale of Books and Works on Paper on Thursday, in 126 lots. Lots 1-70 come from the collection of the late Sol Rabb, and lots 115-126 are from the collection of James Stevens Cox, F.S.A.
Finally, and also on Thursday, Heritage Auctions sells Historical Manuscripts, in 301 lots. An Abraham Lincoln letter to George McClellan of October 29, 1862, just a week before McClellan's sacking, has a $60,000 reserve. A large Civil War archive of Massachusetts cavalryman William B. Arnold has a $14,000 reserve.
