Autograph letter signed to his sister [together with] “To the Sun-Set Breeze” Original printer’s proof, signed by Whitman.. Camden, 1890; 29 June 1891

In this fine, warm letter to his sister, Whitman writes, “Love to you sister dear. The day has got along & I have just time to hurry this off to catch this evng’s mail. Much the same with me— hot wave here again. Am anchor’d here at my window as usual. 2 enc’d.” The latter comment may refer to Whitman’s enclosure of the accompanying broadside (see next item). Several well-known photographs capture Whitman in his final years seated at his window at a table overflowing with his papers.

$40,000

Autograph letter signed to Miss Thurston. No place, [c. 1868 or possibly later]

Louisa May Alcott discusses the impact of Little Women and its place in children’s literature. She observes that “My ‘Little Women’ have much astonished their Momma by making many friends for themselves, & she can only account for it by the grain of truth that lay at the bottom of the little story.”

$38,000

Flowers from My Garden. Sketched and Painted from Nature. [New York], [1864]

FIRST EDITION, a unique pre-publication copy with 18 fine watercolors, the original art used as the basis for the lithographs in the published edition.

$37,500

The Lord of the Rings. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1954-1955

FIRST EDITIONS, FIRST PRINTINGS. This is a very attractive set of the celebrated Lord of the Rings trilogy. The size of the edition was small: The Fellowship of the Ring (3000 copies), The Two Towers (3250 copies), and The Return of the King (7000 copies).

$35,000

The French Revolution, a History. Boston: Little & Brown, 1838

First American edition. A splendid presentation copy inscribed by Ralph Waldo Emerson to his brother: “Wm. Emerson from his brother Waldo.” The inscription is in pencil in the second volume. Emerson used this intimate signature only with his immediate family. Page 270 of the first volume bears a pencil correction apparently in Emerson’s hand.

$30,000

Tanglewood Tales, inscribed to Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1853

First American edition, first printing of Hawthorne’s final children’s book. A spectacular American literary presentation copy inscribed by Nathaniel Hawthorne to Oliver Wendell Holmes: “O.W. Holmes from his friend N.H.”

$30,000

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885

First American edition, in publisher’s morocco with the rare first state of the illustration on p. 283.

$30,000

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.. London: Strahan and Cadell, 1776-1788

First editions of all six volumes of the most celebrated historical work in English literature. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall covers the thirteen centuries from the age of Trajan to the fall of Constantinople with unmatched erudition, clarity, and organization. “Gibbon brought a width of vision and a critical mastery of the available sources which have not been equaled to this day; and the result was clothed in an inimitable prose” (PMM).

$28,000

Autograph manuscript on Ralph Waldo Emerson. No place, [ca. 1870s]

In this fine manuscript Whitman writes, “It is very plain after reading Emerson’s forenoon essays, and then those of his elder age that the latter are not the consecutive fruits or crowning results of the former.”

$28,000

“Poetry of Flowers” autograph manuscript watercolor album. No place, ca. 1820s

This splendid album of botanical watercolors and the “poetry of flowers,” the product of years of reading, writing, and painting, was created by Lady Laetitia Emerson Tennent. She collected several hundred poems and lines of verse concerning flowers and the language of flowers written by poets from Shakespeare and Spenser to Wordsworth and other Romantics, the famous and the obscure.

$27,000