Rare Books &c. at Auction This Week

Here are four sales I'll be watching this week:

At Christie's Paris on Tuesday, 4 February, Paul Destribats: Bibliothèque des avant-gardes, Partie II. The 276 lots include a maquette for of Iliazd's La Maigre (published in 1952), estimated at €80,000–120,000. A lovely copy of Tzara and Picasso's La Rose et le Chien (1958), with an original signed drawing by Picasso and extra suites of the illustration could sell for €60,000–80,000. Several other works by Iliazd are expected to sell very well.

Also on Tuesday, Doyle will hold another online sale of Sporting & Travel Books from the Library of Arnold "Jake" Johnson. The 350 lots are expected to be in the three-figure range, for the most part. Highlights could include the first volume of the Transactions of the Literary and Philosophical Society of New-York (1815), estimated at $600–800, and two volumes of Wenham Lake Shooting Records, from the library of Edward Sands Lichfield (also estimated at $600–800).

PBA Galleries will sell Rare Books & Manuscripts at the Pasadena Book Fair on Thursday, February 6, in 168 lots. A Taber viewbook of Pacific Coast sites from around 1890 containing forty-six mounted photographs is estimated at $80,000–120,000. David Roberts' Egypt and Nubia (1846–1849), with the three volumes bound in two, could sell for $40,000–60,000. A suite of John Martin's colored mezzotints for an 1827 edition of Paradise Lost is estimated at $15,000–25,000. Also on offer is a seventeenth-century manuscript book of horoscopes ($12,000–18,000).

Rounding out the week, Lettres & Manuscrits Autographes at Ader on Thursday, in 413 lots. A papal bull from 1147 concerning a Cistercian abbey rates the top estimate, at €13,000–15,000.