Bonhams Skinner August Americana Auction
August 13 at 10 am
Marlborough, MA
www.skinnerinc.com
americana@bonhamsskinner.com
508.970.3200

MARLBOROUGH, MASS. — Bonhams Skinner has unveiled several highlight lots to be featured in its books and manuscripts sale, an online auction that will take place August 15-23 on Bonhams Skinner’s website and will be accompanied by a digital catalog. Included will be personal and handwritten correspondence from major American personages of the Twentieth Century, including actress and Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly, biographer and poet Carl Sandburg and civil rights activist and congressman John Lewis.

An array of handwritten letters and postcards from Princess Grace appear in the sale, including on Palais de Monaco letterhead. Addressed to a Mrs Arthur Pinney, these letters represent the lively and lifelong correspondence between Kelly and her close childhood friend, referred to in her letters affectionately as “Margie.” Raised together in the Philadelphia suburbs before Kelly’s career as a Hollywood actress and subsequent marriage to Prince Rainier III, the consignor remained in close correspondence throughout Kelly’s life, and served as a confidant and sympathetic ear to one of the most public-facing figures of the Twentieth Century. This archive of a friendship — spanning from Kelly’s coronation in the mid-50s through the rest of her life — appears in the online auction alongside a sizable collection of royal wedding invitations, archival photographs and other occasional memorabilia sent by the princess to her homeland companion.

Equally passionate and revealing of their singular author are a series of letters, handwritten notes and signed dedications by the poet and biographer Carl Sandburg, made out to the New York artists Len and Olga Steckler. Members of an artist and writer’s colony that Sandburg once visited, the Stecklers became close friends and early readers of the eminent American poet from the early 1950s until his death in 1967. His affection for them is clear in a number of effusively dedicated publications (many of them first editions) and memoranda from Sandburg’s own desk: in one letter, he refers to the couple as his “partners, [and] not merely dancing partners, what with the good work we get done.” After winning a Pulitzer Prize for his multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, Sandburg became a popular authority on the American Civil War; included in this sale is a copy of the Gettysburg Address, which he read on CBS Today in 1961, in honor of the war’s centenary, and later passed on to Olga with a handwritten note of appreciation.

Finally, this sale is notable for an original draft of a 1979 letter sent by John Lewis to a curious reader of Southern Exposure, in which Lewis makes a principled and passionate case for the nonviolent activism he studiously employed during the Civil Rights Movement. Responding to an inquiry from a Massachusetts journalist about the nature of his background in non-violence, Lewis — who passed away in 2020 as a lauded Congressional representative, and was at the time of writing this letter the associate director of the federal volunteer agency ACTION — steadfastly defends nonviolent intervention as “more than just a tactic” employed by Civil Rights Movement leadership. “For me and for many others, nonviolence had become a discipline, a philosophy, a way of life.” The letter, which goes on to elucidate the history of the nonviolent movement, from Gandhi through Rev James Lawson’s impact on Martin Luther King, incorporates a moving appeal for empathy beyond race and background — a fine representation of what makes Lewis’s legacy one of the most singular and significant in recent American history.

For additional information, www.skinnnerinc.com or 508-970-3000.

1. Creamware Transfer Decorated “Success to the Crooked but interesting Town of Boston” Jug, England, late 18th century
2. Carved, Gilded, and Painted Phrygian Cap, likely New England, c. 1800
3. School of Spoilum, (China, Early 19th Century), View of the Hongs, Canton, frame height. 8 in., width 9 1⁄2 in.
4. John Haley Bellamy Carved and Painted Eagle Plaque, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, late 19th century
5. A selection of fine Chinese export silver from a large collection
6. Manuscript Journal of the Yacht Cleopatra’s Barge on a Voyage of Pleasure, Vol. I, March 30, 1817 to October 3, 1817
7. Patriotic Sand Bottle with Eagle, Locomotive and Tender, Andrew Clemens, McGregor, Iowa, 1880s
8. Montague J. Dawson (British, 1890-1973), Sweeping Along
9. Two-sided Samuel McIntire Carved and Painted Pine profile Portrait of George Washington, Salem, Massachusetts, c. 1805-1811
10. Chinese School, 19th Century, Praia Grande Harbor, Macau
11. Chinese Export Gouache Portrait of High Imperial Commissioner Keying
12. A group of A. E. Crowell miniature birds, part of a larger collection
13. Needlework Picture of a Lady and Gentleman, England, c. late 17th century, part of an extraordinary collection of needlework
14. Small Wicker Settee, part of the renowned collection of Diane Norman Bernstein, which will be present in our online auction