: The rare 1640 first collected edition of William Shakespeare's
Poems, selling for $25,875, despite lacking the
frontispiece and five other leaves, was a highlight of PBA
Galleries' recent auction of rare books and manuscripts,
featuring the autograph collection of Florence S. Walter, Part I.
The auction was conducted just days following the 38th California
International Antiquarian Book Fair, and the select gathering of
rarities from the Thirteenth through Twentieth centuries was
available for preview by hundreds of antiquarian book dealers
from around the globe who were exhibiting at the fair, as well as
numerous collectors and scholars that attended the event. The
results were outstanding, according to the auction house, prices
were above the norm for the 191-lot auction. Sales totaled
$283,234.
The first lot in the sale, a 1703 edition of Aesop's
Fables, illustrated with engravings after Francis Barlow,
was a case in point. The copy formerly belonged to the Eighteenth
Century naturalist Mark Catesby, with his ownership signature on
the title page, and had been beautifully rebound in period style
by Philip Dusel, but it was still somewhat surprising when it
climbed above the $7/10,000 estimate to sell for $11,500. Soon to
follow was a 1481 Italian edition of St Thomas Aquinas' Super
quarto libro Sententiarum with a beautiful illuminated
opening leaf, the fifth lot in the auction, which sold for
$4,888.
A 1703 edition of Aesop's "Fables," $11,500.
An account of the Spanish conquest of the New World, the
Regionum indicarum per Hispanos olim devastatarum of
Bartolome de las Casas, published in Heidelberg in 1664,
illustrated with the graphic and somewhat disturbing engravings by
Theodore De Bry of brutal Spanish atrocities, was bid to $4,600.
Another account of the Spanish conquest, the rare 1632 second
edition of Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva
Espana by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, topped the estimate at
$8,625 despite having the upper portion of the engraved title page
clipped off.
And an important Eighteenth Century work on the botany of
Virginia, Flora Virginica exhibens plantas, by John
Clayton and J.F. Gronovius, the 1762 second edition (which was
the first to contain the map of Clayton's travels), was hammered
down at $5,463.
Rarities of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries also were
sought after, and brought strong, and in a few cases,
mind-boggling prices. Theodore Duret's rare early work on the
Impressionist movement, Die Impressionisten: Pissarro, Claude
Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cezanne, Guillaumin,
published in 1909 in an edition of 1,000 copies, with seven
original etchings in addition to other illustrations, rose to
$8,625, tripling the $2,5/3,500 estimate. A lovely little book
from William Morris's Kelmscott Press, The Tale of King Florus
and the Fair Jehane, one of 365 copies, in a unique hand
embroidered binding accomplished by the printer's daughter, May
Morris, stunned potential bidders on the floor and on the phone
when it opened - and closed - at $10,350, far above the
$1,2/1,800 estimate.
One of the high spots of American literature, Mark Twain's
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the 1885 first American
edition in mixed state, sold well above its usual price at
$9,200, due its exceptional condition.
"The Tale of King Florus and the Fair Jehane," from William
Morris's Kelmscott Press, $10,350.
Among other notable items in the auction were a rare 1824
Virginia printing of The Whole Art of Book-Binding...,
fetching $3,450; a pirated edition of Les Trois
Mousquetaires by Alexandre Dumas, printed in Brussels in 1844,
the same year as the Paris first edition (and possibly preceding
it), selling for $5,750; an 1818 Aesop's Fables, illustrated
by Thomas Bewick, with a fore-edge painting depicting the fable of
the Fox and the Crow (one of a large selection of books with
fore-edge paintings in the catalog), brought $1,495; Athanasius
Kircher's Mundus subterraneus, 1665, the first scientific
attempt to explain the mysteries beneath the surface of the earth,
with numerous copper-engraved maps and engravings, split the
estimate at $10,350.
A beautiful illuminated manuscript Koran from the late Eighteenth
Century, in a period painted boards binding, sold at $5,750; a
rare booklet of four leaves by John Taylor, The Whole Life and
Progress of Henry Walker the Ironmonger, 1642, being an early
biography of a bookseller, found a buyer at $4,600; a handwritten
bill signed by Sigmund Freud went at $2,588; and an eight-line
handwritten fragment by Isaac Newton, mentioning devilry, though
stained, sold for a respectable $5,750.
All prices include the 15 percent buyer's premium.
