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

Photo Album Operation Greenhouse. Hollywood, California: United States Air Force Lookout Mt. Laboratory, [1951]

This rare album documents Operation Greenhouse, the first series of tests in the nascent American thermonuclear weapons program. The four tests were performed in April and May 1951 at the Enewetak Atoll of the Marshall Islands. Following the Soviet Union’s successful test of an atomic bomb in August 1949, the United States made the controversial decision to proceed with the development of thermonuclear weapons. These fusion weapons (the “Super” or hydrogen bomb) would be orders of magnitude more destructive than the fission weapons used against Japan.

$17,500

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

Torat ha-Elohim. The Law of God [Five Books of Moses]. Philadelphia: C. Sherman, 5605-6 (1845-46)

FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH of the Pentateuch translated by a Jew and the first American translation of the Torah. Isaac Leeser was the single most influential Jewish figure in 19th-century America. His many accomplishments include establishing the vernacular sermon as a permanent feature in the American synagogue, publishing the first successful American Jewish newspaper, and founding the first American rabbinical school.

$17,000

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches. C. H. Webb, New York, 1867

FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING. One of only 1000 copies.

$16,000

Voyage to the South Sea Undertaken by Command of His Majesty, for the Purpose of Conveying the Bread-Fruit Tree to the West Indies, in His Majesty’s Ship The Bounty … including an Account of the Mutiny …. London: George Nicol, 1792

First edition of the official account of the Bounty expedition. The story of the mutiny and Bligh’s subsequent voyage is one of the great tales in maritime history.

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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

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). New York: Webster, 1885

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, with all of the first state text points found in cloth copies. A variety of errors were discovered and corrected during the course of printing the first edition, and collectors have always preferred the earliest, uncorrected states.

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A collection of all six portraits of the last surviving veterans of the American Revolution. Hartford: Moore, 1864

These is a complete collection of original carte de visite photographs of all six Revolutionary War veterans still surviving in 1864: William Hutchings (aged 100), Samuel Downing (aged 102), Daniel Waldo (aged 102), Adam Link (aged 102), Alexander Millener (aka Muroney) (aged 104), and Lemuel Cook (aged 105). A seventh man, James Barham, was believed to be alive but could not be located for the series.

$15,000

Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, life among the lowly. Boston: Jewett, 1852

FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING. “These books are of such paramount historical importance that it is difficult to evaluate them as literature” (Merle Johnson). “Three thousand copies were sold on the day of publication, and before its first anniversary, over 300,000 copies were sold in America … More than twenty London editions appeared in 1852, so the English audience must have been as large as the American. No other American novel has been translated into so many foreign languages” (Grolier/American).

$15,000