Rare Books &c. at Auction This Week

Kicking off the week is the Fine Books, Maps, and Manuscripts sale at Revere Auctions (online), in 463 lots. A set of Sir Richard Burton's translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night (1885), with Supplemental Nights (1886), could sell for $3,000–4,000. The 1666 Pieter Goos map "Paskaerte van Nova Granada en t'Eylandt California," showing California as an island, is estimated at $2,000–3,000. At the same rating is a copy of the first American edition of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1848).

Kestenbaum & Company holds an online sale of Hebrew & Judaic Printed Books on Thursday, in 276 lots. Most estimates are in the three-figure range, but among the expected highlights are the first American edition (and first edition in English, in a translation by Isaac Leeser) of Joseph Schwarz's Descriptive Geography and Brief History of Palestine (Philadelphia, 1850), estimated at $1,000–1,500. At the same estimate is Joshua Falk's Sepher Avnei Yehoshua, the first rabbinical text published in America (New York, 1860). Chaim Abraham Gagin's Sepher HaTakanoth VeHaskamoth (Jerusalem, 1842), a collection of the rites and customs of Jerusalem by the city's chief rabbi, is estimated at $800–1,200.

Also on Thursday, Autographs, Books, Declaration Signers, FDR & More at University Auctions. The 281 lots include Abraham Lincoln's copy of Washington Irving's 1838 one-volume collection of Oliver Goldsmith's Miscellaneous Works, estimated at $100,000–120,000. Lincoln's brother-in-law Ninian Edwards gave the book to him, and it was among a box of books Lincoln gave to his law partner William Herndon before his inauguration. Herndon in turn gave the book to Boston activist Caroline Healey Dall in October, 1866. Since then the book has sold at auction at least four times, in 1923, 1974, 1980, and 2001.

Estimated at $50,000–100,000 is a photo album containing a signed CDV of Lincoln by Alexander Gardner (the Lincoln photograph has been removed and is now stored separately). A 1527 book in a binding bearing the arms of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, once in the collection of H. Bradley Martin, is estimated at $18,000–20,000.