-
Case Antiques
Two-Day Summer Auction
July 12 & 13, 2025Case Antiques, July 12-13: Winston Link Signed Photograph, Hotshot Eastbound, Iager, West Virginia, July 1957. $3,400 to $3,800.Case Antiques, July 12-13: Alexander Hamilton ALS, Whiskey Rebellion. $2,800 to $3,200.Case Antiques, July 12-13: Civil War Canteen and Letters, Thomas Tabb Jr. CSA. $1,800 to $2,200.Case Antiques
Two-Day Summer Auction
July 12 & 13, 2025Case Antiques, July 12-13: Archive of Capt. William Tabb of MS, CSA, Killed Atlanta. $1,000 to $1,400.Case Antiques, July 12-13: Rudyard Kipling Collection, 29 Volumes, First Editions; Zaehnsdorf Bindings. $1,000 to $1,200.Case Antiques, July 12-13: Artist Andrew Wyeth & Family Signed Letters, Cards. $1,000 to $1,200.Case Antiques
Two-Day Summer Auction
July 12 & 13, 2025Case Antiques, July 12-13: Augusta Resolves Silk Broadside, Revolutionary War RelateD. $800 to $1,000.Case Antiques, July 12-13: 1894 Map of Nashville. $800 to $900.Case Antiques, July 12-13: CSA Navy Appointment, Semmes and Mallory plus Photo of Lt. Armstrong. $600 to $800.Case Antiques
Two-Day Summer Auction
July 12 & 13, 2025Case Antiques, July 12-13: Slave Colonies of Great Britain, 1825, Macaulay, First Edition, plus Debate on Abolition, 1792. $600 to $800.Case Antiques, July 12-13: Signed Photo of 3 Presidents: Nixon, Ford, Carter. $600 to $800.Case Antiques, July 12-13: Slave Ledger, Merrill Plantations, Natchez, MS & Concordia, LA. $1,000 to $1,200. -
Rare Book Hub is now mobile-friendly! -
Sotheby’s
New York Book Week
12-26 JuneSotheby’s, June 25: Theocritus. Theocriti Eclogae triginta, Venice, Aldo Manuzio, February 1495/1496. 220,000 - 280,000 USDSotheby’s, June 26: Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby, 1925. 40,000 - 60,000 USDSotheby’s, June 26: Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Printed ca. 1381-1832. 400,000 - 600,000 USDSotheby’s, June 26: Lincoln, Abraham. Thirteenth Amendment, signed by Abraham Lincoln. 8,000,000 - 12,000,000 USDSotheby’s, June 26: Galieli, Galileo. First Edition of the Foundation of Modern Astronomy, 1610. 300,000 - 400,000 USD -
Finarte
Books, Autographs & Prints
June 24 & 25, 2025Finarte, June 24-25: ALIGHIERI, DANTE / LANDINO, CRISTOFORO. Comento di Christophoro Landino Fiorentino sopra la Comedia di Danthe Alighieri poeta fiorentino, 1481. €40,000 to €50,000.Finarte, June 24-25: ALIGHIERI, DANTE. La Commedia [Commento di Christophorus Landinus]. Aggiunta: Marsilius Ficinus, Ad Dantem gratulatio [in latino e Italiano], 1487. €40,000 to €60,000.Finarte, June 24-25: ALIGHIERI, DANTE. Il Convivio, 1490. €20,000 to €25,000.Finarte
Books, Autographs & Prints
June 24 & 25, 2025Finarte, June 24-25: BANDELLO, MATTEO. La prima [-quarta] parte de le nouelle del Bandello, 1554. €7,000 to €9,000.Finarte, June 24-25: LEGATURA – PLUTARCO. Le vies des hommes illustres, grecs et romaines translates, 1567. €10,000 to €12,000.Finarte, June 24-25: TOLOMEO, CLAUDIO. Ptolemeo La Geografia di Claudio Ptolemeo Alessandrino, Con alcuni comenti…, 1548. €4,000 to €6,000.Finarte
Books, Autographs & Prints
June 24 & 25, 2025Finarte, June 24-25: FESTE - COPPOLA, GIOVANNI CARLO. Le nozze degli Dei, favola [...] rappresentata in musica in Firenze…, 1637. €6,000 to €8,000.Finarte, June 24-25: SPINOZA, BARUCH. Opera posthuma, 1677. €8,000 to €12,000.Finarte, June 24-25: PUSHKIN, ALEXANDER. Borus Godunov, 1831. €30,000 to €50,000.Finarte
Books, Autographs & Prints
June 24 & 25, 2025Finarte, June 24-25: LIBRO D'ARTISTA - LECUIRE, PIERRE. Ballets-minute, 1954. €35,000 to €40,000.Finarte, June 24-25: LIBRO D'ARTISTA - MAJAKOVSKIJ, VLADIMIR / LISSITZKY, LAZAR MARKOVICH. Dlia Golosa, 1923. €7,000 to €10,000.Finarte, June 24-25: LIBRO D'ARTISTA - MATISSE, HENRI / MONTHERLANT, HENRY DE. Pasiphaé. Chant de Minos., 1944. €22,000 to €24,000.
Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - August - 2008 Issue
A Late Spring from Elysium Books
By Michael Stillman
We may have received this catalogue a bit late, since it is entitled Spring 2008, but the year is right, if not the season. It comes from Elysium Books of North Pomfret, Vermont, and perhaps summer never goes that far north, making it still spring. This catalogue contains books primarily of gay interest. There are books by homosexual authors or about issues that affected the community. Most go back to the first half of the 20th century and farther, when tolerance of differences was perhaps somewhat less than it is today. Here are a few of the books that return to a time when writing about these issues was undoubtedly more difficult than it is today.
All communities have their good people and their bad, sometimes both rolled into one. Most people are just typical, but they don't make as good stories, so this book is about a man who started good but apparently turned very, very bad. Gilles de Rais was a French nobleman of the 15th century who inherited great wealth (much of which he squandered away). He served the French as a heroic associate of Joan of Arc. Normally, that would have been enough to make him an enduring hero to his countrymen, but what he did later reversed his standing. He had uncontrolled and diverse sexual predilections that led him to kill what has been estimated at anywhere from 150 to 800 children, mostly boys. It seems hard to imagine he could have gotten away with quite that much killing, and author Aleister Crowley was dubious of the whole matter. Gilles confession was reportedly elicited through the threat of torture, though there were also many witnesses against him. Crowley, an occultist and bisexual himself, saw Gilles' dabbling with black magic the reason for his unpopularity. Whatever the reason, Gilles was tried by both ecclesiastic and secular courts, and while his excommunication by the former was forgiven, his death sentence by the latter was not. He was hanged. In 1930, Crowley was invited to speak before the Oxford University Poetry Society about Gilles. However, at the last minute, the invitation was withdrawn. The University's Catholic chaplain exerted pressure to cancel the invite. Crowley knew exactly how to respond. He followed through on a threat to publish his lecture and hand out copies at Oxford. It undoubtedly reached more people this way than a simple talk ever would have. Item 65 is Crowley's The Banned Lecture Gilles de Rais to have been delivered before the Oxford University Poetry Society by Aleister Crowley on the evening of February 3rd, 1930... Priced at $425.
Item 58 is what Elysium refers to as, "In our opinion, [Jean] Cocteau's greatest illustrated work, consisting of thirty-one self-portraits, created while he was undergoing a disintoxication program for his addiction to opium." He spent hours looking into a mirror, coming to grips with his addiction and, perhaps, mourning the loss of young poet Raymond Raguet, to whom he was close (however, Cocteau denied that this was a cause of his addiction). The book, published in 1925, is Le Mystere de Jean l'Oiseleur, and one of those portraits can be seen on the cover of this catalogue (click the thumbnail image above to see). $3,500.
Sometimes those that are victims of persecution can be driven together, which explains this odd book, Despised and Rejected, by A.T. Fitzroy. Published during the First World War (1917), it likens the treatment of homosexuals to that of conscientious objectors during the war. Neither group was accepted by much of society. Item 96. $1,500.