Rare Books &c. at Auction This Week
Vienna's Dorotheum auction house hosts a sale of Autographs, Manuscripts, and Certificates on Monday, June 4, in 404 lots. A Maximilian Stadler music manuscript has the highest opening bid at ??20,000. Much of the rest of the material starts in the low-to-mid three-digits, though.
On Tuesday, June 5, Swann Galleries sells Illustration Art, in 257 lots. See Rebecca's post for a good survey of the original book cover art offered. Other highlights include an original Peanuts strip, "Do you like Beethoven?" (estimated at $20,000-30,000), Charles Addams' New Yorker cover "Penguin Convention" ($15,000-25,000), Arthur Rackham's "Danaë and the Infant Perseus" from the 1922 Hodder & Stoughton edition of Hawthorne's A Wonder Book ($10,000-15,000), and Harrison Cady's "Peter Rabbit and His Friends," a 1926 cover for Lady's Home Journal using characters from Thornton W. Burgess stories ($7,000-10,000).
Also at Swann, on Thursday, June 7, Maps & Atlases, Natural History & Color Plate Books, in 397 lots. Audubon's "Fish Hawk" (Osprey) from the Birds of America could sell for $30,000-50,000, while a subscriber's copy of the first octavo edition of Birds is estimated at $25,000-35,000. An 1827 map of Virginia, not publicly recorded for sale since 1963, rates a $20,000-30,000 estimate. Some other notable lots from this sale include a collection of ocean liner passenger ephemera and a deck of playing cards from around 1870 with the original box, complete with brass scorekeeping arrows(!); both of these are estimated at $200-300.
Skinner's online sale of Fine Books & Manuscripts (noted in last week's post) continues through June 8.
Image credit: Swann Galleries
