Poems: Written by Wil. Shake-speare. Gent.. London: Printed by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold by Iohn Benson, 1640

First collected edition of Shakespeare’s poems and the earliest obtainable edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Please inquire

Autograph manuscript notebook, the working notebook for the verses later published in The Seraphim, and Other Poems.. No Place, 1835-1837

This extraordinary manuscript is Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s heavily revised autograph working notebook for The Seraphim, and Other Poems, the book that first brought her fame.

$550,000

Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies … the Second Impression. London: Printed by Tho. Cotes, for Robert Allot, 1632

This is an excellent example of the Second Folio, the second edition of Shakespeare’s collected plays. This is “incomparably the most important work in the English language” (Jackson, Pforzheimer Catalogue).

$475,000

Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War. Washington, D.C.: Philp and Solomons, [1865-66]

FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE of the most famous photographically illustrated American book of the nineteenth century.

$275,000

Ulysses.. Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1922

First edition. Number 44 of 100 numbered copies printed on Van Gelder paper and signed by James Joyce.

$275,000

Acts Passed at a Congress of the United States of America, … the city of New York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, in the year M,DCC,LXXXIX.. New York: Francis Childs and John Swaine, Printers to the United States, 1789

$200,000

Leaves of Grass [with] Whitman’s own copy of his 1860 portrait. Brooklyn, New York, 1855

First edition, first issue, one of only 337 copies of the first issue, distinguished by its elaborately gilt-stamped cloth binding prepared in June/July 1855. Whitman reported that only 800 copies were printed; this copy is from the first group to be bound. The copies bound later did not have the extensive gilt stamping. Whitman paid for the book, supervised its production, and even set a number of pages in type.

two items: $160,000

Autograph manuscript signed “Emily,” the poem “I came to buy a smile – today.”. Amherst, Massachusetts, ca. 1861

$125,000

De Architectura. Venice: Giovanni Tacuino, 22 May 1511

First illustrated edition of Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture, a landmark in the history of architecture. This is the only work on architecture to survive from antiquity. It was Vitruvius (ca. 90-20 BC) who famously declared that a structure must be durable, useful, and beautiful. His terms for order, arrangement, proportion, and fitness for purpose have guided architects for centuries. Vitruvius served in the campaigns of Julius Caesar, and he was involved in the restoration of Roman aqueducts. In ancient Rome, architecture encompassed not just the design of buildings but also civil and mechanical engineering, construction, military engineering, and urban planning.

on hold: $95,000

Aristoteles Master-piece, or, The Secrets of Generation displayed in all the parts thereof.. London: J. How, 1684

First edition of Aristotle’s Masterpiece, “the most popular book about women’s bodies, sex, pregnancy, and childbirth in Britain and America from its first appearance in 1684 up to at least the 1870s” (Treasures, Library Company of Philadelphia).

$75,000