Thursday, June 18, 2015

Antiquarian Book News

Next PBFA Book Fairs — Edinburgh, Lincoln 20 June
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PBA Galleries – June 25 – 11am
Sale 563

Fine Literature
with the Wayne Martin Collection of Jack London, Part One.

Among the highlights:
  • Manuscript diary kept by Yoshimatsu Nakata, valet to Jack and Charmian London, on their final voyage to Hawaii aboard the Matsonia in 1915. Estimate: $8,000-$12,000.

PBA

  • First edition, first issue of Jack London's most enduring work, The Call of the Wild, with the rare pictorial dust jacket. Estimate: $3,000-$5,000.

  • The Cruise of the Snark by Jack London. John Meyers O'Hara's copy, with a lengthy letter from the author, written "On Board the Snark". Estimate: $4,000-$6,000.

  • Original typescript for Jack London's play "The Acorn Planter", written for the Bohemian club in 1915. Estimate: $3,000-$5,000.

  • "In Many Wars" with a contribution by Jack London as a correspondent from the Russo-Japanese War, with his signature and 40 others. Estimate: $2,500-$3,500.

  • Special signed edition of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," one of only 300 copies. Estimate $2,500-$3,500.

  • Signed limited edition of John Steinbeck's "The Red Pony," one of 699 copies. Estimate $1,500-$2,500.

  • "Addams and Evil" with an original watercolor sketch of Lurch as Santa Claus by Charles Addams. Estimate: $2,000-$3,000.

  • Rare first edition of Laurence Sterne's classic "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy," published just three weeks before his death. Estimate: $2,500/$3,500.

Each lot illustrated in the online version of the catalogue.
Bid directly from the site. Now available in the Bid Live Now section
More than 450 lots of fine literature including Part I of the Wayne Martin Collection of Jack London. Among the highlights of the collection are first editions of his major works, some in the rare original dust jackets, many inscribed to friends, family, and associates; a number of letters from Jack London, to his wife Charmian and others; manuscripts, rare ephemeral items, and much more. The second section of the auction includes fine literature from the 18th through 20th centuries, with first editions from John Barth, Charles Bukowski, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, William Everson, F, Scott Fitzgerald, Ian Fleming, Zane Grey, Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, Joyce Carol Oates, John Steinbeck, Laurence Sterne, Mark Twain, E.B. White, Oscar Wilde, and many, many more.
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Bach portrait returns home


The best-known portrait of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach was returned to its home city during a ceremony. Thanks to both William Scheide who died in November at the age of 100 the 1748 work was unveiled in a packed church in Leipzig. It is now on public view for the first time in centuries.

The ceremony to welcome back the painting featured the local St Thomas boys choir of which Bach was once cantor and kicked off the annual Bachfest, featuring more than 100 concerts until June 21, in the 1,000-year-old city.

The portrait, by painter Elias Gottlob Haussmann, is now valued at $2.5 million (2.2 million euros) and is widely considered the most authentic depiction of the Baroque period composer and appears in many biographies. Its exact whereabouts over many years are uncertain, but it was owned from the early 19th century by the Jewish Jenke family from Breslau, now Wroclaw in western Poland.

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Personal letters of Harper Lee fail to sell at auction

Although there was a good deal of press coverage about the private life and private letters of Harper Lee the letters failed to sell at Christie’s auction last week. It had been hoped that they would command a figure of around $250,000(£163,000). The six letters were addressed to Lee’s architect friend, Harold Caulfield, between 1956 and 1961, which was the period that Lee wrote her celebrated classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.

In the letters Harper Lee revealed how difficult she found it to work in her hometown of Monroeville and how she longed to get back to New York. The letters were also signed with comic pseudonyms, including “the prisoner of Zenda.”

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