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Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: These are the Times that Try Men's Souls, Thomas Paine. $80,000-$120,000Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: Manuscrpit from Aboard The Discovery, Signed by George Vancouver. $80,000-$120,000Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: Exceedingly Rare Holograph Fragment of James Cook's Logbook. $80,000-$120,000Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: Colonial America: The Collection of William Nesheim: Thomas Lechford: Important First-Hand Account of Life in New England. $40,000-$60,000Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: The First Expanded Edition of Common Sense, Thomas Paine. $30,000-$50,000Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: California! The Gold Rush Collection of Bruce Maclin: Album of Exceptional California Lettersheets. $20,000-$30,000Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: California! The Gold Rush Collection of Bruce Maclin: An Exceptional Group of Gold Rush Letters, c. 1849-1850. $20,000-$30,000Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: Colonial America: The Collection of William Nesheim: Mather's King Phillips War Tract 1639-1723. $15,000-$25,000Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: Colonial America: The Collection of William Nesheim: The First Contemporaneous Account of the Salem Witch Trials, Cotton Mather. $15,000-$25,000Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: Poor Richard's Almanack 1749, Benjamin Franklin. $15,000-$20,000Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: California! The Gold Rush Collection of Bruce Maclin: Fruits of Mormonism by Nelson Slater. $15,000-$25,000Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: California! The Gold Rush Collection of Bruce Maclin, Across the Plains in '49 by Emanuel Goughnour. $12,000-$18,000 -
Swann Auction Galleries
Fine Books
October 23, 2025Swann, Oct. 23: Lot 344: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Author's Album Containing Retained Copies of Letters, January 1951-June 1956.Swann, Oct. 23: Lot 34: Tycho Brahe, Epistolarum Astronomicarum Libri, first edition, 1610.Swann, Oct. 23: Lot 370: Francesca Woodman, Some Disordered Interior Geometries, Pittsburgh: Synapse Visual Arts Press, 1981.Swann Auction Galleries
Fine Books
October 23, 2025Swann, Oct. 23: Lot 179: Claudius Ptolemy, Omnia, quae extant, Opera; Geographia Excepta, Basel: Henricum Petrum, first collected Latin edition, 1541.Swann, Oct. 23: Lot 11: Aristarchus of Samos, De Magnitudinibus et Distantiis Solis et Lunae Liber, Pesaro: Apud Camillum Francischinum, first separate edition, 1572.Swann, Oct. 23: Lot 358: Joan Miró, illus. & René Char, Le Marteau sans Maître, limited edition, 1976.Swann Auction Galleries
Fine Books
October 23, 2025Swann, Oct. 23: Lot 324: Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, inscribed first edition, 1940.Swann, Oct. 23: Lot 300: Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, first edition, scarce second issue, 1843.Swann, Oct. 23: Lot 107: Johannes Kepler, Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo nuper ad Mortales Misso a Galilaeo Galilaeo, third edition, 1609.Swann Auction Galleries
Fine Books
October 23, 2025Swann, Oct. 23: Lot 330: James Joyce, Ulysses, rare first Paris edition, 1922.Swann, Oct. 23: Lot 382: Edward Gorey, The Doubtful Guest, with limited edition doll, ca. 1974.Swann, Oct. 23: Lot 146: John Dee's copy of the Chaldaica Grammatica by Sebastian Munster, first edition, 1527. -
Bonhams, Oct. 14-24: William Harvey Creates the Harveian Oration. $250,000-$350,000Bonhams, Oct. 14-24: Delambre's Own Heavily Annotated Copy of Base du Systeme Metrique Decimal. $100,000-$150,000Bonhams, Oct. 14-24: Einstein's Autographed Letter to Johannes Stark. Pivotal Step in Development of General Relativity. $25,000-$35,000Bonhams, Oct. 14-24: James Watson: An Important Collection of Scientific Letters. $20,000-$30,000Bonhams, Oct. 14-24: 1949 Howard N. Potts Medal awarded to J. Presper Eckert for the Eniac, The Realization of Modern Computing. $20,000-$30,000Bonhams, Oct. 14-24: Shannon Creates the Framework for Modern Computing, in Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. $20,000-30,000Bonhams, Oct. 14-24: Scientific Manuscript of Robert Hooke. $30,000-$50,000Bonhams, Oct. 14-24: Luigi-Federico Menabrea: First Description of Babbage's Analytical Engine. $8,000-$12,000Bonhams, Oct. 14-24: Faraday on Galileo's Falling Bodies Experiment. $4,000-$6,000Bonhams, Oct. 14-24: First Re-creation of Nuclear Fusion in a Lab. $4,000-$6,000Bonhams, Oct. 14-24: The Apple Revolution: Apple iPhone 1 Sealed in Original Box. $8,000-$12,000Bonhams, Oct. 14-24: Darwin & Wallace: On the Tendency of Species to form Varities. $15,000-$25,000 -
![<b>Forum, Oct. 30:</b> Coryate (Thomas). <i>Coryats Crudities: Hastily gobled up in five months travells,</i> first edition, [William Stansby for the Author], 1611. £5,000 to £7,000.](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/28d53e3e-21f2-4aed-9422-e0fcd955bb3c.png "<b>Forum, Oct. 30:</b> Coryate (Thomas). <i>Coryats Crudities: Hastily gobled up in five months travells,</i> first edition, [William Stansby for the Author], 1611. £5,000 to £7,000.")
![<b>Forum, Oct. 30:</b> Mayer (Attributed to Auguste Etienne Francois). Astrolable, the French ship under the command of Jules Dumont d'Urville (1790-1842), caught in pack ice in Antarctica, watercolour, [c. 1838]. £1,500 to £2,000.](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/12489d2d-552a-4bb8-8169-891afba37a9f.png "<b>Forum, Oct. 30:</b> Mayer (Attributed to Auguste Etienne Francois). Astrolable, the French ship under the command of Jules Dumont d'Urville (1790-1842), caught in pack ice in Antarctica, watercolour, [c. 1838]. £1,500 to £2,000.")
Forum Auctions
The Library of John and Suzanne Bonhams
30th October 2025Forum, Oct. 30: Bligh (William). A Voyage to the South Sea, undertaken by command of His Majesty, for the purpose of Conveying the Bread-Fruit Tree to the West Indies ..., first edition, 1792. £3,000 to £4,000.Forum, Oct. 30: Coryate (Thomas). Coryats Crudities: Hastily gobled up in five months travells, first edition, [William Stansby for the Author], 1611. £5,000 to £7,000.Forum, Oct. 30: Krusenstern (Captain Adam Johnson von). Voyage Round the World ... by order of His Imperial Majesty Alexander the First, 2 vol. in 1, first edition in English, 1813. £5,000 to £7,000.Forum, Oct. 30: Mayer (Attributed to Auguste Etienne Francois). Astrolable, the French ship under the command of Jules Dumont d'Urville (1790-1842), caught in pack ice in Antarctica, watercolour, [c. 1838]. £1,500 to £2,000.Forum, Oct. 30: Oxley (John). Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales, first edition, 1820. £5,000 to £7,000.Forum Auctions
The Library of John and Suzanne Bonhams
30th October 2025Forum, Oct. 30: Richardson (John) & others. Fauna Boreali-Americana; or the Zoology of the Northern Parts of British America, 4 vol., first edition, 1829-37. £20,000 to £25,000.Forum, Oct. 30: Shackleton (Ernest H.) The South Polar Times, 4 vol., vols 1 & 2 numbered 30 of 350 copies, vol. 3 no. 23 of 350 copies, vol. 4 no. 30 of 500 copies, 1907-2010. £10,000 to £15,000.Forum, Oct. 30: Shipley (Lt. Conway). Sketches in the Pacific: The South Sea Islands, first edition, 1851. £12,000 to £18,000.Forum, Oct. 30: Webb (Rev. Arthur J.) The History of Fiji,, first edition, 1885. £2,500 to £3,500.Forum, Oct. 30: Weddell (James).- Open face chronometer pocket watch, owned by James Weddell, Grant, Fleet Street, 1811. £15,000 to £20,000.
Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - October - 2007 Issue
Exceptional Works in Catalogue 1 from Michael Sharp Rare and Antiquarian Books
The first catalogue from Michael Sharpe Rare and Antiquarian Books.
By Michael Stillman
Just published this past month is the first catalogue (Catalog No. 1) from Michael Sharpe Rare and Antiquarian Books of Pasadena, California. The firm's founder is a California businessman and philanthropist as well as long-time book collector. Mr. Sharpe has brought in four veterans of Los Angeles' fabled Heritage Book Shop, whose owners recently elected to sell their valuable real estate and retire. Joining Sharpe are Nat Des Marais, Michael Garabedian, Kimberly Cummings, and J.P. Morgan (Sharpe notes, "what a fine name for a rare book shop employee!"). The result is a new shop with many decades of history and experience.
The first Sharpe catalogue covers a variety of subjects. They describe their collection as "comprising holdings in voyages and travel, science and natural history, literature, fine printing, Western Americana, and books from Printing and the Mind of Man." The consistent theme here is that these are exceptional books, the most valued and collectible of titles, and generally in fine or outstanding condition for their age. Mr. Sharpe is obviously a discerning collector and carries that eye over to the books being offered in the shop that bears his name. Here are a few examples.
We will start with the ultimate in rare and antiquarian books, at least in terms of being rare and antiquarian, though perhaps not what we typically describe as "books." Item 53 is a cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia, almost 3,500 years old. This is a large Sumerian fragment of the Epic of Gilgamesh from the Middle Babylonian period, around 1400 BC. The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest known pieces of literature, it dating back to the third millennium BC. Gilgamesh was a Sumerian king, leader of the walled city of Uruk in what is today Iraq (government there operated more efficiently five millennia ago). It is not known whether he is a totally mythical figure or was a real king, though the latter is certainly a possibility. If so, however, his exploits were clearly exaggerated in the epic, as might be expected in a story not written until many centuries after its characters died. If Gilgamesh did exist, he likely ruled in the period 2700-2500 BC. And, even if Gilgamesh was not real, this tablet certainly is, and is likely to be the oldest piece of writing you will find available for purchase. Priced at $450,000.
Item 79 is the story of another great leader, though he lived some 4,500 years after Gilgamesh. This is The Life of George Washington, five volumes of the first editions, published from 1804-1807. It was written by John Marshall, the most important Supreme Court Chief Justice in American history, and a great admirer of the nation's first Chief Executive. Washington was also the subject of many myths, but such were unnecessary, his achievements as accounted by Marshall being quite real. $12,500.
