The Penn Club requests the honour of your company at a reception to be given to Mr. Walt Whitman …. Philadelphia, March 27, [1880]

This is a rare invitation to an event held in Whitman’s honor at the prestigious private Penn Club in Philadelphia. Whitman, who wore a shabby coat festooned with dozens of pins, did not disappoint the curious.

$1,500

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

Dred Scott decision – “Important Decision of the Supreme Court:” in National Intelligencer. Washington: Gales and Seaton, March 7, 1857

This is the announcement of the Dred Scott decision, brought as breaking news by a leading Washington newspaper.

$4,500

Le Conquête de l’Air. Paris: Le Petit Journal, 1909

This spectacular color lithograph commemorates the Grande Semaine d’Aviation of 1909, the first international public flying event and a turning point in aviation history. The powered aircraft featured at the event dominate the center. Surrounding it are portraits of pioneering figures in flight (including Wright, Curtiss, Latham, Fournier, and Blériot) and vignettes from aviation history.

$2,500

Extra. Senseless Panic. New York: New York Daily Bulletin, September 24, 1873

The Panic of 1873 was set off by the failure of Jay Cooke & Co., the leading American banker of its day. Because of financial crises in Europe , the Credit Mobilier scandal, and related problems, the firm declared bankruptcy on September 18, 1873. The bank’s failure set of a chain of events including the failure of many insurance companies and banks and the ten-day closure of the New York Stock Exchange starting on September 20. Within two months 55 railroads had failed. The downturn, which lasted for the rest of the decade, was known as the Great Depression until the 1930s depression took that name.

$400

A collection of 3 Wall Street cartoons in The Daily Graphic. New York: The Daily Graphic, 19 July 1880, 1 March 1882, 27 June 1882

These splendid front-page illustrations show the great bogeymen of Gilded Age Wall Street during the era of the robber barons.

$2,800

Some Account of the Pennsylvania Hospital; From its First Rise, to the Beginning of the Fifth Month, called May, 1754. Philadelphia: B. Franklin and D. Hall, 1754

FIRST EDITION of Benjamin Franklin’s account of the Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital established in the British colonies, co-founded by Franklin with his friend Dr. Thomas Bond. It remains a leading medical institution in Philadelphia.

$17,500

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

Profile bust portrait of Charles Darwin, signed by Cameron. London: Colnaghi, 1868

The great Darwin portrait, Julia Margaret Cameron’s 1868 profile of Darwin is probably the most famous photograph of a 19th-century scientist. Darwin remarked, “I like this photograph very much better than any other which has been taken of me.”

$52,000

Portrait of Abraham Lincoln with his son Tad. Washington, February 5, 1865

Perhaps the most delightful of the Lincoln family photographs, this portrait shows an impish Tad leaning on a table as his seemingly bemused father sits on Gardner’s studio chair. Thomas “Tad” Lincoln was the youngest of the Lincoln boys.

$65,000