North Carolina-based Leland Little Auctions will be in short order hosting their Important Spring Auction. Scheduled for Saturday, March 2nd, the sale contains over 400 lots, of which just a handful pertain to the fields of books, maps, manuscripts and ephemera. However, within the offering, maps are a great strength of the auction, and collectors of the early American republic won’t want to ignore The Federalist.
Lot 1236 (with the first lot being 1001) is the two-volume set of The Federalist, with volume I being a 2nd edition of 1799, and volume II a 1788 first edition. The 1799 printing of the first volume is considered quite rare, and this copy was likely bound and sold together with the first edition of volume II by John Tiebout, the printer of the edition. Both volumes are identically bound as a numbered set. The importance of The Federalist needs not be expounded upon here, I think! The set is estimated $5,000 to $10,000.
Leland Little is often consigned material by collectors in relatively close proximity, and thus the material brought to auction usually contains some such that relates to the South. In terms of maps, eight are offered covering the southeastern seaboard, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida (Lots 1226 to 1233). Among these, the first official state map of South Carolina is a standout. Made by John Wilson and published in 1822, the map is “in part a descendant of Mouzon’s celebrated 1775 effort [and] is a compilation of the district surveys commissioned after the War of 1812 at the behest of the South Carolina General Assembly.” Composed of four separate copperplate engravings, it is quite large when the quadrants are joined: 50.5” x 65.25”. It is estimated $5,000 to $10,000 as well.
Other maps in the sale include a late 16th century copperplate engraving by Abraham Ortelius of the New World, an early French Republican map of Great Britain and Ireland, a 1671 map of the American eastern seaboard from the Chesapeake Bay to northern Florida with striking hand-colored illustrations depicting natives.
Leland Little’s Important Spring Auction is slated for Saturday, March 2nd at 10am EST. Bidding is available in person, over the phone, online, and absentee. The entire catalog is online and available here, but as the books and other printed material are a small portion of the sale. I recommend looking directly at the Books & Historical category here and/or the Prints & Multiples category here for ease of access.
