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<b><center>Sotheby’s<br>The Library of Henry Rogers Broughton, 2nd Baron Fairhaven<br>Part II<br>29 November 2022</b><b>Sotheby’s, Nov. 29:</b> Nicolas Robert. <i>Florilegium,</i> 15 very fine watercolours of flowers on vellum, 1643. £150,000 to £250,000.<b>Sotheby’s, Nov. 29:</b> Chinese School. <i>Dessins Originaux Chinois,</i> 9 volumes, early nineteenth century. £60,000 to £90,000.<b>Sotheby’s, Nov. 29:</b> Saverio Manetti. <i>Storia naturale degli uccelli,</i> Florence, 1767-1776, 5 vols, fine contemporary calf gilt. £60,000 to £80,000.<b>Sotheby’s, Nov. 29:</b> Priscilla Bury. <i>A Selection of Hexandrian Plants,</i> London, 1831, modern red half morocco. £50,000 to £70,000.<b>Sotheby’s, Nov. 29:</b> Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin. <i>Icones plantarum rariorum,</i> Vienna, 1781-[95], 3 vols, contemporary half calf. £30,000 to £50,000. -
<center><b>Forum Auctions<br>Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper<br>1st December 2022</b><b>Forum, Dec. 1:</b> Illuminated manuscript.- Psalter, Use of Liège, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum, Southern Netherlands (Liège), [c.1270]. £70,000 to £90,000.<b>Forum, Dec. 1:</b> Troy.- Early English provenance.- Columna (Guido de). <i>Historia destructionis Troiae,</i> first edition, one of only four known books from this press, [The Netherlands, ?Utrecht], [c.1477-1479]. £25,000 to £35,000.<b>Forum, Dec. 1:</b> Shute (John). <i>The First and Chief Groundes of Architecture,</i> first edition, 1563; bound with Palladio's Quattro Libri dell'Architettura, 1570. £20,000 to £30,000.<center><b>Forum Auctions<br>Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper<br>1st December 2022</b><b>Forum, Dec. 1:</b> Martin (John). <i>Paradise Lost: By John Milton,</i> first edition in the original 12 parts, Imperial Quarto issue, Septimus Prowett, 1825-26. £12,000 to £16,000.<b>Forum, Dec. 1:</b> Sagittarius and a medieval town scene with peat barges on a canal as merchants meet and talk and another man cuts wood, Netherlands or Western Germany [perhaps Cologne], 1460-70. £10,000 to £15,000.<b>Forum, Dec. 1:</b> Stoker (Bram). <i>Dracula,</i> first edition, later issue, Graham Greene's copy, Westminster, Archibald Constable & Co., 1897. £8,000 to £12,000.<center><b>Forum Auctions<br>Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper<br>1st December 2022</b><b>Forum, Dec. 1:</b> Gillray (James). <i>The Plumb-pudding in danger: -or- State Epicures taking un Petit Souper,</i> etching with hand-colouring, 1805. £6,000 to £8,000.<b>Forum, Dec. 1:</b> Darwin (Charles). Autograph Letter signed to his cousin Reginald Darwin, 1879, announcing his intention to have translated and add a preface to Ernst Krause's sketch of Dr Erasmus Darwin's life. £6,000 to £8,000.<b>Forum, Dec. 1:</b> By the Congress of the United States of America. Manifesto. "These United States, having been driven to hostilities by the oppressive and tyrannous measures...,” bound with others, 1778. £6,000 to £8,000.<center><b>Forum Auctions<br>Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper<br>1st December 2022</b><b>Forum, Dec. 1:</b> Polar.- Benham (Daniel). <i>Sketch of the Life of Jan August Miertsching, Interpreter of the Esquimaux Language to the Arctic Expedition on Board H.M.S. "Investigator", Captain M'Clure,</i> first edition, 1854. £5,000 to £7,000.<b>Forum, Dec. 1:</b> Woman artist.- Unthank (Mary, née Williams). An album of 120 watercolours of views from Italy, Switzerland, France and England; with associated manuscript travel diary, 1860s-1870s. £4,000 to £6,000.<b>Forum, Dec. 1:</b> Gill (Eric).- Chaucer (Geoffrey). <i>Troilus and Criseyde,</i> number 159 of 225 copies on hand-made paper, Golden Cockerel Press, 1927. £3,000 to £4,000. -
<center><b>Swann Auction Galleries<br>Maps & Atlases, Natural History & Color Plate Books<br> December 8, 2022</b><b>Swann December 8:</b> Friedrich Justin Bertuch, <i>Bilderbuch für Kinder,</i> Weimar, 1792, 1798, 1802, 1805, 1822. $1,200 to $1,800.<b>Swann December 8:</b> Sebastian Münster, <i>Novae Insulae XXVI Nova Tabula,</i> Basel, 1552. $2,500 to $3,500.<b>Swann December 8:</b> Sebastian Münster & Hans Holbein, <i>Typus Cosmographicus Universales,</i> Basel, 1532. $7,000 to $10,000.<b>Swann December 8:</b> Franz Unger, <i>Die Urwelt in Ihren Verschiedenen Bildungsperioden,</i> 16 tinted lithographed plates, Weigel, 1858. $1,000 to $1,500.<b>Swann December 8:</b> Charles Varle, Wiliam Warner & Andrew Hanna, <i>Plan of the City of Environs of Baltimore,</i> Baltimore, 1801. $8,000 to $12,000.
Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - June - 2006 Issue
Fascinating and Unusual Americana from David Lesser Antiquarian Books
The latest Rare Americana from David Lesser.
By Michael Stillman
We have received catalogue 90 of Rare Americana from David M. Lesser Fine Antiquarian Books, and as always, it is a treat for those who collect in the field. Lesser's catalogues are filled with the unusual and obscure, though the items generally deal with the critical issues of the day. There are pamphlets of early anti-slavery societies, those that paved the way for the debates that would eventually tear the nation apart. There are accounts of major trials, perhaps forgotten today, but the ones that would have filled Court TV if Court TV had existed in the 19th century. We hear political debates, theological debates, ethnic debates, all of the disputes which occupied our ancestors' time, just as new versions of the same old issues dominate our own. Democratic-Republican splits, views for and against immigration and immigrants, separation of church and state -- none of these issues are new, they just take different forms. David Lesser's catalogues are a window on the world as experienced by ordinary Americans, and as such, they are among the most fascinating we receive. Here are a few of examples.
Davy wasn't the only Crockett to die in 1836. Simeon L. Crockett also passed away that year, but unlike the frontiersman, he was no hero. Simeon Crockett was an arsonist, who set fire to a Boston tenement. Reportedly, 100 people lost their lives in that fire. If so, Crockett became victim number 101. He was tried, convicted, confessed, and was executed. The book is A Voice from Leverett Street Prison, or the Life, Trial and Confession of Simeon L. Crockett. Who was Executed for Arson, March 16, 1836. Supposedly, his behavior was caused by drink, and this book is a temperance tract as well as a criminal history. The author was probably Edward T. Taylor, prison minister who testified to the validity of Crockett's confession. Item 35. Priced at $150.
Temperance was not only an issue for the Union. Evidently the Confederacy had drinking problems as well. This problem is elucidated in Liquor and Lincoln. By a Physician, circa 1862. The unnamed physician warns that the South will not gain its freedom from "Lincoln's usurpation" if it continues to "spend the hours and days, in drinking, gambling, and too often, alas! in obscene and profane jocularity." Better to be bowed under Lincoln's yoke, he says, "than made ourselves the willing slaves of groveling passions, and depraved appetites." Item 74. $600.
John A. Wills expressed his strong support for equal rights in 1841 in this Oration, Delivered Before the Citizens of Blairsville...(Pennsylvania). He believed that all men and women had divine rights and that the government had no business taking those away. Even the unpropertied, he believed, had equal rights to the franchise. However, the following comment seems like a bit of a backhanded compliment: "They [rights] belong alike to the Indian, the Negro, and the Asiatic -- to humanity in all its forms, however degraded and disgusting -- equally with the more favored Caucasian race." Item 140. $475.
