"Keeps its finger on the pulse of the rare book world" - William Reese

Christie’s South Kensington is offering over 400 highlights from the library of Swedish collector Andras Gedeon, which will go on sale on the 23rd April from 2pm. Author of 'Science and Technology in Medicine: An Illustrated Account Based on Ninety-Nine Landmark Publications from Five Centuries' (2006), Gedeon's collection includes major works by Descartes, Darwin, Rutherford and Einstein, and key texts in the development of our understanding of subjects as diverse as DNA, anaesthesia and global warming.

Gedeon is an engineer who worked for many years in the medical equipment industry and such multidisciplinary experience is reflected in the breadth of his collection, which straddles the fields of medicine, technology and pure science. The collection encompasses everything from the first full account of the discovery and construction of the telescope – Pierre Borel’s [‘Petro Borello’] De vero telescopii inventore … (The Hague: A. Vlacq, 1655-6; estimate: £15,000-20,000) – to a copy of the May 1974 issue of IEEE Transactions on Communications (Volume Com-22, no.5), containing an article by the American scientists Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn called ‘A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication’ which is generally accepted as the founding document of the Internet (signed at the top of the article by both Cerf and Kahn; estimate: £3,000-4,000).

The view is free and open to the general public from Saturday 19 April:
The view will close at 12noon on Wednesday 23 April.

PBA Galleries sell “a revealing and interesting archive that shows Bukowski’s no-nonsense attitude towards life, writing and art.”

An archive of 16 letters written by Bukowski to the editor of the Bukowski Primer book, Loss Pequeño Glazier; plus a copy of the book, All’s Normal Here will be offered in PBA Galleries’ sale on April 3, 2008.

The letters, 13 of which are typed and include holographic corrections/notes, the other 3 handwritten and signed, are estimated to sell for $10,000/15,000.

Bukowski wrote to Glazier, giving him permission to use his piece Going Modern for publication, but specified that he did not want it produced in the chapbook format. When Glazier went ahead, Bukowski had most of the copies destroyed or suppressed. The few that survive became one of the most difficult “A” list Bukowski pieces to acquire.

In these letters, Bukowski writes: “I’m not writing much better now than I was decades ago when I was starving to death in those small rooms and on those park benches and in those flophouses, and while I was being nearly murdered in those factories and in the post office…”

And about fame: “But things happen very quickly – one moment you’re a drunken bum fighting with drunken and drugged and insane women in a low-class apartment, then it seems the next thing you’re in Europe and you walk into a hall and there are 2,000 wild people waiting for you to read some poems…”

http://www.pbagalleries.com/

Graham Greene Record set at Bloomsbury Auctions

In a recent Bloomsbury sale of Modern First Editions, Literature & History, Economics & Law, Graham Greene’s Rumour at Nightfall, stole the show when it realised a world record price of £18000, remarkably outstripping its estimate of £6000-8000.

Greene prohibited the book to be reprinted, which led to a shortage of copies on the market. Despite its extremely rare dust-jacket being both torn and water damaged, it broke previous records of around £12000. Roddy Newlands, Bloomsbury’s Modern Firsts expert, said in good condition it might have fetched over £20000.

Other items that did particularly well include: a signed first edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles selling for £1900, almost five times its higher estimate, a first English edition of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot for £4600, a first edition of Ian Fleming’s Moonraker, with a near full-page signed inscription made £10500, and From Russia, With Love with an inscription reading: ‘To Gomer Who has helped James Bond so much & so long…’ which sold for £16500 – ten times its estimate.  

This record sale secures another first for Bloomsbury on the First Edition front.

www.bloomsburyauctions.com

The PBA Galleries will be holding a sale covering books in all fields, from Illustrated & Children’s Books to Miniature books and photography.

Some of the main highlights include:

A first edition of Richard Doyle’s In Fairyland: A Series of Pictures from the Elf-World. 16 hand-coloured plates of elves, fairies and other fantastical beings ($3000-5000).

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1 of 1000 copies, first American edition, 1866. ($3000-5000)

From My Album: 60 Photographic Images by Her Majesty Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna. Rare photographic work in Russian by the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, wife of Czar Nicholas II, the last imperial ruler of Russia. ($4000-6000)

The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library: English Literature, 1475-1700, 3 volumes, one of 150 sets, privately printed by Bruce Rogers at the Morrill Press ($4000-7000).

The Library of William Andrews Clark, Jr. A catalogue especially notable for its great collection of first editions of the English Classics. The collection was bequeathed to the University of California at Los Angeles, complete in 20 volumes. ($5000-8000)

The sale will take place on Thursday March 20. For more information, please visit:

http://www.pbagalleries.com/

Bloomsbury Auctions will be holding an exciting sale of Modern First Editions, Literature & History, Economics & Law, on the 13th March that deserves some serious attention.

The First Editions section consists of a wide selection of authors from Amis, Berryman, Chatwin, Dahl and Faulkener to Graves, Greene, Hemingway, Joyce, Stevenson and Tolkien. A first edition of Conrad’s Lord Jim (lot 26) is estimated to sell for £500-600 while lot 35 The Book of Thoth inscribed in Greek by Aleister Crowley (referred to as ‘the wickedest man in the world’), is expected to reach £1500-2000. This section also has nine lots of Conan Doyle first editions, estimated between £120-1800. Amongst the five T.S. Eliot items are two copies of the first English edition in book form of The Waste Land, expected to fetch between £3000 and £4000.

To mark the centenary of the birth of Ian Fleming, Bloomsbury is offering 14 titles from the author and in the past they have achieved many world record prices when auctioning Fleming. Three of these titles, Moonraker (£6000-8000), From Russia with Love (£1500-2000) and Goldfinger (£1500-2000) are inscribed to James Gomer Berry (1st Viscount Kemsley), who was the newspaper publisher and owner of The Sunday Times where the author worked. Bond enthusiasts will certainly be attracted to the extremely rare first edition of The Man with the Golden Gun, complete with the original first state boards (£2500-3000).

Bloomsbury will also be selling a first edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in 3 volumes, which has an impressive estimate of £10000-£15000. Amongst the bibles is the second folio edition of the King James Bible, also known as ‘The Great She Bible’ (£6000-8000). This edition contains an error in Matthew XXVI, 36 where the word ‘Judas’ appears instead of ‘Jesus’.

For more information on the Bloomsbury sale, please visit:

http://www.bloomsburyauctions.com/