Some highlights from today's Sotheby's Paris sale, as promised:
- Several pre-Revolutionary Robespierre manuscripts sold for 72,250 EUR, better than doubling the estimate.
- An 1851 Flaubert manuscript made 89,050 EUR, while one by Gerard de Nerval fetched 120,250 EUR.
- As expected, the André Breton manuscripts were the high spots: his Manifeste du Surréalisme went for 1.9 million EUR (doubling the high estimate), while Poisson Soluble fetched 917,000 EUR (tripling its estimate). Others also sold well; another three broke 100,000 EUR. [Update on the Bretons: the Guardian reports that the total price for the nine Breton manuscripts was €3.6m (£2.9m), and that a "bidding war" broke our over the collection. "The nine manuscripts were eventually acquired by Gérard Lhéritier, a noted collector and the founder of the Museum of Letters and Manuscripts in Paris, assuaging fears the collection would be split up and sold separately."]
NB: The copy of Breton's Surrealist Manifesto sold today is the only known complete copy.
