Christies Holds sale of Fine Books and Manuscripts including Americana Now Through February 5

Christie’s New York is setting its sights skyward with Valuable Books in the History of Astronomy from the Collection of Jay M. Pasachoff, the centerpiece of its Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts including Americana sale. This is an online auction with bidding open now until the morning of Thursday, 5 February.

The late Dr. Pasachoff, who taught astronomy at Williams College for fifty years, was widely admired as both a scholar and an educator. He was also one of the world’s most experienced eclipse observers, having witnessed more than seventy solar eclipses over the course of his career — a world record number.

Pasachoff possessed an insatiable interest in astronomy. He devoured journals, filled filing cabinets with notes, and transformed that material into pedagogy. He coauthored the leading college astronomy textbook, several popular survey works, and, with the art historian Roberta Olson, Cosmos: The Art and Science of the Universe. It was the success of these books that brought the resources to assemble his collection, then pursued with the same energy he brought to teaching and observing.

His choice library includes works by Peter Apian, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley, Albert Einstein, and Richard Feynman — the major figures who shaped the discipline across centuries, with particular strength in the 16th and 17th centuries. Highlights include Kepler’s exceptionally rare first book, the Mysterium cosmographicum, from the library of Frederick the Great; a truly lovely copy of the first edition of Newton’s Principia in contemporary vellum; and superb copies of both Galileo’s Dialogo (the Honeyman copy) and Sidereus nuncius.

From the 1980s through the 2010s, Pasachoff sought out copies of the highest quality, often in original bindings. The library reflects both sides of Pasachoff’s intellectual life: the working astronomer with a deep command of his field, and the committed bibliophile who consistently sought out the finest, most beautiful copies available.

Dr. Pasachoff’s are not the only important scientific books in the sale. They are joined by choice titles in the Library of Rudy Ruggles, Jr. Anchored by high spots in science, social science, and travel, the Ruggles Collection includes the first edition of Hooke’s Micrographia, the hand colored Perrette copy of Schedel’s Liber Chronicarum, and a handsome first edition of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations alongside the exceptionally rare 1577 edition of Peter Martyr’s The History of Travayle in the West and East Indies, the best and most expansive early English collection of voyages, encompassing pioneering accounts of China, Japan, and the Northwest Passage.

Other highlights include a remarkable presentation copy of Charles Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit, the deluxe issue of David Roberts’s Egypt and Holy Land, a 1573 Ortelius atlas, a Steve Jobs Toy Story archive, and a “Noble Fragment,” leaf from the Gutenberg Bible.

Here's a link to the sale on February 5th, 2026.

onlineonly.christies.com/s/fine-printed-books-manuscripts-including-americana/viewing-room/1/3766?sc_lang=en