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

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.”

$4,800

View of Rome from the Tiber River with Castel Sant’Angelo and Saint Peter’s Basilica. Rome, ca. 1870

$4,500

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

East Front of the Capitol. Washington, c. 1864

This photograph by Alexander Gardner shows the Capitol as it was during Lincoln’s presidency. Scaffolding, cranes, ladders, and other construction equipment are visible. The East Front of the Capitol was the site of Lincoln’s inaugurations in 1861 and 1865.

$3,800

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

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948

FIRST EDITION of this classic, a book that helped usher in the sexual revolution.

$3,500

Works. Chapman and Hall, [1870s]

A very handsome set of the famous “Illustrated Library Edition,” here in an early printing. The dedication at the front of the first volume (Pickwick Papers) states, “This the best edition of my books is, of right, inscribed to my dear friend John Forster, biographer of Oliver Goldsmith, in affectionate acknowledgment of his counsel, sympathy, and faithful friendship during my whole literary life.” “The Library Edition came about largely because of the suggestion of Forster that while Dickens’s works were available in volumes in the Cheap Edition and in reprints of the serial parts, there was no high-quality edition that would appeal to the wealthy. Dickens eventually came round to the idea that an elegant edition could raise the stature of his writings.

$3,500

The Naked and the Dead. New York and Toronto: Rinehart, 1948

First edition of Norman Mailer’s landmark first novel. This is the first printing, with the Rinehart colophon on copyright page, and in the first issue dust jacket without reviews on rear flap.

$3,500

“Ueber die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Waerme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Fluessigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen” in Annalen der Physik, 4. Folge, 17 Band, No. 8. Leipzig, 1905

FIRST EDITION. “On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid Demanded by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat” appears here on pp. 549-560. This landmark paper on Brownian motion is one of the three great papers from 1905, Einstein annus mirabilis.

$3,500