Early Angling Books, Tonson’s Caesar, Witkower’s Autographs: Auction Preview

Here are the sales I’ll be watching this week:

On Wednesday, July 24 at Dominic Winter Auctioneers, 498 lots lots of Printed Books, Maps & Caricatures, including a private collection of angling books and a number of lots related to Lord Nelson. A copy of the 1653 second edition of Thomas Barker’s The Art of Angling is expected to sell for £5,000–8,000, while a deluxe copy of Edmonds and Lee’s Brook and River Trouting (1916) could fetch £4,000–6,000. At the same range is a working draft typescript of T. E. Lawrence’s Revolt in the Desert.

Forum Auctions sells 303 lots of Books and Works on Paper on Thursday, July 25, including a copy of the first issue of the constructivist periodical G: Material zur elementaren Gestaltung (1923), expected to sell for £1,000–1,500. Dickens’ Master Humphrey’s Clock in the 88 original weekly parts rates the same estimate.

The Bonhams Skinner Books and Manuscripts summer sale ends on Thursday: among the 148 lots are a 1783 military discharge signed by George Washington ($8,000–12,000); the large autograph collection of Hartford bookseller Israel Witkower (also $8,000–12,000); and a group of about 100 printed Christmas cards featuring Robert Frost poems (many in multiple copies), estimated at $3,000–5,000.

At Potter & Potter on Thursday, 504 lots of Fine Books & Manuscripts, including a presentation copy of Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad, inscribed to Jane Findlay Shunk ($20,000–30,000). A Chinese album printed for distribution at the Second Congress of the Defenders of World Peace in Warsaw in 1950, with one photograph of Mao Zedong hand-signed by Mao, is estimated at $15,000–20,000.

PBA Galleries sells 426 lots of Children’s Literature on Thursday. Rating the top estimate is a first edition copy of Jane Eyre (1847), expected to sell for $10,000–15,000. The 1753 Tonson edition of Caesar’s Commentaries is estimated at $8,000–12,000, and a first edition of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are with the dust jacket could sell for $7,000–10,000.