Splendid album containing 50 watercolors, 70 photographs, and fine calligraphic selections of poems and prose. Mostly Possingworth and environs, 1879 - ca. 1905

This magnificent, imposing album was made by a prominent late-Victorian hostess, patron of the arts, and gifted amateur artist. Helen Rose Huth was the wife of the banker Louis Huth. The Huths were major art collectors, and Helen sat for both George Frederic Watts and James Abbott McNeill Whistler who painted the celebrated “Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth.”

$16,000

Autograph note signed to John H. Johnston. Camden, March 7, 1887

Whitman writes to his good friend and benefactor John H. Johnston, the New York jeweler, evidently congratulating him on the birth of his child: “Bless the dear baby, & all babies – Love to you & wife, Walt Whitman.”

$6,500

Autograph manuscript signed “Walt Whitman on the Poets.”. No place, [1885]

In this fascinating manuscript Whitman provides a newspaper with an article defending himself against attacks that he did not respect the great American poets of the day.

$7,500

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

Original drawing of Walt Whitman. no date, no place, 19th century

This original pen and ink drawing of Walt Whitman is mounted at the front of an 1888 edition of Leaves of Grass. The likeness of a jaunty, casual, Whitman wearing his trademark slouch hat takes its cue from the famous 1855 Hollyer engraving, but here we see an older Whitman with a full beard.

$4,800

Portrait of Walt Whitman holding a butterfly. Philadelphia, [early 1880s?]

A beloved Whitman photograph, framed with a large, bold signature of the poet.

$4,500

Autograph letter signed to [Fanny Kellogg]. Down, Beckenham, Kent, April 13, 1879

Darwin discusses the hereditary transmission of behavior and a vivid example of the phenomenon from the opening chapter of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

$18,000

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

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

Photograph signed. Photographer unidentified, c. 1870s

Sherman is most famous for the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the first major federal action to curb the power of the great monopolies.

$2,800