Le Juif Errant [The Wandering Jew]. Paris: Paulin, 1844-45

First edition of Sue’s The Wandering Jew.

$24,000

Autograph letter signed to Sophia Hawthorne. Andover, 22 June 1863

Harriet Beecher Stowe arranges a visit to Hawthorne’s Concord home. Stowe wrote this letter the year before Nathaniel Hawthorne’s death. She tells Hawthorne’s wife Sophia,

“Mr. Stowe & I have long desired to renew our acquaintance with you, but Concord is rather too far off for a card-case call & this leads me to say that on Sunday next we shall pass your house on our way to a friends’ with whom we pass Sunday, & we propose to ourselves then the pleasure of calling & seeing you & Mr. Hawthorne & your family once more.”

$22,500

Poems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882

Presentation copy inscribed by the author and artist Celia Thaxter: “Mary Mapes Dodge with much love. Illustrated by Celia Thaxter 1882.”

$22,000

Autograph note signed to Robert Watt with original albumen print photograph. No place, July 16, 1874

Mark Twain the humorist. Samuel Clemens sent this delightful humorous note with the accompanying half- length standing portrait of the debonair author.

$18,000

Flower Fables. George W. Briggs & Co., 1855

$18,000

Manuscript From The Life of Washington. No Place, ca. 1859

This is a long, revised autograph manuscript for Washington Irving’s The Life of George Washington. This section of the monumental biography presents the growing schism between Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Hamilton, as Washington was considering standing for re-election for a second term. The manuscript, which includes most of chapter 16 of the final volume, opens with Washington reading Jefferson’s letter accusing Hamilton and his followers of using the new Constitution “only as a step to an English Constitution.” It concludes with Washington’s attempts at reconciliation, hoping that “there may be mutual forbearance and temporizing yielding on all sides. Without these I do not see how the reins of government are to be managed, or how the Union of the States can be much longer preserved.”

$15,000

The Celestial Rail-Road. Boston: James F. Fish, 1843

$15,000

Liberty Tree: with the Last Words of Grandfather’s Chair. Boston: E. P. Peabody, 1841

$15,000

The Water Witch or The Skimmer of the Seas. Dresden: Walther, 1830

Rare true first edition of Cooper’s pirate romance. This nautical novel set in 17th-century New York was first published in a small edition in Dresden, where the author had settled in 1826. London and Philadelphia editions soon followed.

$15,000

The Personal History of David Copperfield. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1850

First edition. From the library of novelist E. M. Forster.

$12,500