Schøyen Collection Manuscripts, Maria Edgeworth’s Copy of Camilla, Ansel Adams Photos: Auction Preview

Here are the auctions I'll be watching this week:

At Christie's London on Tuesday, June 11, 61 lots of Manuscript Masterpieces from the Schøyen Collection, including the Crosby-Schøyen Codex, the earliest known book in private hands, a papyrus codex (mid-third- to fourth-century) which seems to have served as an Easter lectionary. It is expected to sell for £2 to 3 million. The Holkham Hebrew Bible, written in Toledo in the thirteenth century, is estimated at £1.5–3 million, and the Codex Sinaiticus Rescriptus, a palimpsest in a tenth-century signed binding by John Zosimos, could sell for £1–1.5 million. For anyone interested in early manuscripts, you'll want to have a look at the lots in this sale.

Bonhams London sells 270 Travel & Exploration lots on Wednesday, June 12; the printed materials include Franz Andreas Bauer's Delineations of Exotick Plants, Cultivated in the Royal Gardens at Kew (1796–1803) in original parts (£8,000–12,000); François Levaillant's works documenting his expeditions to Africa (1803) with the plates in two states (£8,000–12,000); and a complete copy of A Collection of Portraits of the Savage Tribes Inhabiting the Boundaries of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope (1822), expected to sell for £6,000–8,000. The 1617–1618 complete edition of Giovanni Botero's Le Relationi Universali is also estimated at £6,000–8,000.

At Forum Auctions on Thursday, June 13, 274 lots of Books and Works on Paper, including a first edition copy of Thomas Hardy's first novel Desperate Remedies (£2,000–3,000); a first edition in book form of Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd (£1,000–1,500); and Maria Edgeworth's copy of Frances Burney's Camilla (the subscriber list for which includes Jane Austen). This is estimated at just £600–800. 

Swann Galleries sells 265 lots of Maps & Atlases, Natural History & Color Plate Books on Thursday. A Dutch East India Company manuscript map of what is now Indonesia from about 1743 rates the top estimate at $110,000–120,000. Robert John Thornton's New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus could sell for $50,000–70,000.

At PBA Galleries on Thursday, 320 lots of Fine Photography from the Collections of Leon Litwack and John Peter Grossmann (with Additions). Ansel Adams' portrait photograph of Robinson Jeffers, signed by Adams, is estimated at $7,000–10,000, and Adams' "Moon and Half Dome" photograph from Yosemite, also signed, could fetch $5,000–8,000.