Hyperion: A Romance. New York: Samuel Colman, 1839

Hyperion is one of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s first published works. It was published in 1839, and is a prose romance that follows a young American named Paul Flemming as he travels through Germany. The journey of the character is partially inspired by the death of a friend, and the romance in the tale is based on Longfellow’s own failed marriage proposals to his beloved.

$3,500

“Photogenic drawing, or drawing by the agency of light” (pp. 159-176) in Edinburgh Review, No. CLIV for January 1843. New York: Mason, 1843

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. This is a major paper on the founding publications on photography by Daguerre and Talbot (as well as those of Netto and Moser) and the history of the new art photography.

$2,200

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

First edition of Sue’s The Wandering Jew.

$24,000

To the friends of the slave in the town of Smithfield. Peterboro, New York: [Smith], March 12, 1844

A fiery antislavery broadside by one of the Secret Six.

$2,500

A collection of images associated with South Carolina physician and plantation owner Sidney Smith. South Carolina, 1845-50

A unique survival. This important collection of largely identified photographs documents the home and family of Dr. Sidney Smith and those he enslaved at Gravel Hill, his South Carolina plantation. The collection includes an extraordinary daguerreotype depicting Dr. Smith, his two daughters, and his brother, posed together with two enslaved African American men. This is one of the earliest known images—if not the very earliest photograph—of an identified plantation owner posing with enslaved African Americans.

$60,000

Portrait Miniature of George and Martha Washington. American, 19th century

$2,200

Michael Faraday. Ipswich, [1851]

This is a rare early state or proof copy of this lovely portrait of Michael Faraday, the greatest figure in the history of elecromagnetism.

$2,800

Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston, 1853

This is a fine salt print portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe by John A. Whipple, a leading early American portrait photographer.

$25,000

Important Pair of Daguerreotypes: Black Caregiver with White Baby and the Child’s Parents. Talbot County, Maryland or Texas, c. 1853

This striking pair of daguerreotypes evokes the complex relationships between enslaved people and their enslavers in the American South, especially between white families and the trusted women who cared for their children.

the pair: $18,500

Leaves of Grass: the original printed paper wrappers. [Brooklyn], [1855]

Although the green cloth bindings for the 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass are familiar, the rare paper wrappers are little known. This set survived only because Whitman preserved them until his death in 1892.

$5,500