Offering Rare Americana, Colorplate Books, Manuscripts, Early Printing, Literature, Maps, Childrens’ Books and Illustrations
Doyle New York’s November 7, 2011 sale of rare books opens with a selection of Americana, including an important Civil War diary by Lieutenant Frederick J. Bartlett of Company C of the 27th Ohio Colored Infantry. Among printed Americana, a fine copy of the first edition of Lawrence Furlong’s The American Coast Pilot … Newburyport: 1796 is featured. This was the first navigational guide of this type printed in the United States and is exceptionally rare. The section includes three Lincoln autograph items; two autograph notes and one document signed. An attractive copy of Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana… London: 1702 rounds out this section.
A small section of Maps includes the Carrington Bowles New and Accurate Map of North America… [1784]; Homann’s Totius Americae Septentrionalis et Meridionalis; Stoopendael’s beautiful Orbis Terrarum Rabula Recens… [circa 1682]; Seutter’s 1730 map of London; and a variety of similar items. Following this is a small group of travel books, including the 1694 Narborough Account of Several Late Voyages…
Color Plate Books include the 1971 facsimile of Audubon’s The Birds of America, one of 250 sets; a copy of Lafosse’s 1772 Cours d’hippiatrique…, with the plates in both colored and uncolored states, bound for Napoleon as First Consul; and a set of David Roberts Egypt and Nubia… 1846-49. Fine printing and binding includes a fine example of a Louis Kinder binding, a Cedric Chivers Vellucent binding with onlays after Rackham, and a small selection of private press books.
This is followed by a section of Children’s and Illustrated Books (including illustration art), highlighted by a pair of original pen and ink drawings by Ernest S. Shephard for Winnie The Pooh, the tailpieces from the “Heffalump” chapter. This section also includes an inscribed copy (to Frances Noyes Hart) of Milne’s When We Were Very Young, 1924, one of 100 numbered and signed copies. An interesting curiosity is a complete set of artwork for Batman 227 The Demon of Gothos Mansion, published 1970.
The sale features a significant group of Manuscripts and Early Printing. The manuscript material includes an extraordinary album of 72 explicit erotic watercolors, circa 1770, likely by Jacob Xavery, whose signature many of these bear. There is also a remarkable manuscript by John Goodwin Of the Circuler Scale… London: 1599. Goodwin, an important Elizabethan instrument maker, described techniques pertaining to the Mercator projection and the manuscript other aspects of great interest to historians of navigation.
The manuscripts are followed by a fine group of Elizabethan Literature, including Barnaby Rich Allarme to England… London: 1578. Thomas Nashe was a great admirer of Rich, and the sale includes a copy of Nashes Lenten Stuffe, London: 1599, an extraordinary display of verbal pyrotechnics that has been compared by some modern critics to Beckett and Joyce. Another interesting work is Henry Chettle’s The tragedy of Hoffman, 1631 (but first performed 1602), which has a plot that parallels that of Hamlet, but was first played a year earlier. In all, the sale contains around a dozen items pertaining to the Elizabethans, a remarkable gathering, as most of these works are of exceptional rarity in commerce.
Other early printing includes Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regain’d, 1668 and 1671, offered as successive lots. The great 1472 Scriptores rei rusticae, printed by Jenson (the first scientific book in Roman type) will be offered, as well as a superlative copy of the so-called Hutter Hebrew Bible of 1587, a magnificent large example in contemporary pigskin.
General Books include items as diverse as a copy of Sigmund Freud’s Die Traumdeutung, Vienna 1900, the first edition of the foundational work of psychoanalysis, and an interesting group of materials relating to Frank Sinatra’s first English and European tours.
This is followed by a large group of Literature unclosing a major collection of William Faulkner, including the rare limited edition of his Go Down, Moses; a copy of Nancy Cunard’s Negro Anthology, two Lewis Carroll first editions with letters by Dodgson laid in; and a copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven 1845. Among literary autographs are a fine Byron letter pertaining to Italian independence; five remarkable Rupert Brooke letters to Harold Monro; and a significant group of George Bernard Shaw correspondence.
Completing the sale is a small collection of books relating to the arts, including a copy of Miro’s Oiseau Solaire with an inscription and original drawing, the Cocteau Picasso de 1916 á 1961 and the Aristophanes Lysistrata. www.doylenewyork.com
Image: Contes de La Fontaine dessine et invente par dom Jason Xavedra Jacobin (title taken from first drawing).N.p, n.d., but likely circa 1770. Estimate $8,000 – $12,000.
