The results for the annual Skinner Fine Books & Manuscripts sale (held in Boston on 15 November) are here. Highlights from the autograph section:
- Lot 96 (a David Hume letter regarding Rousseau's letters to him, est. $10,000-15,000), sold for $18,368.
- Lot 131 (a fantastic Martin Luther letter, est. $15,000-25,000), fetched $106,650.
- Lot 151 (an Isaac Newton manuscript on ancient European history, est. 10,000-15,000), made $21,330.
- Lot 187 (two manuscript pages of Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, est. $4,000-6,000), sold for $21,330.
Lot 17 (a lock of the hair of John Brown, est. $5,000-7,000, picture on p. 11 of the catalog); Lot 179, a large collection of material relating to Albert Schweitzer (est. $35,000-55,000); and Lot 184 (a Peter Stuyvesant letter, est. $20,000-30,000) did not sell.
Highlights from among the books:
- Lot 204, a Walt Whitman signed and corrected printed folio proof sheet, sold for $17,775.
- Lot 252 (Barton's 1817 Vegetable Materia Medica of the United States, a presentation copy to Commodore William Bainbridge, est. $6,000-8,000) made just $1,541;
- Lot 331 (a set of early printings of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland works, bound uniformly, est. $3,500-4,500) sold for $5,925.
- Lot 359 (a five-volume set of Gould's Birds of Great Britain, est. $60,000-80,000) fetched $56,288.
- Lot 363 (a book from the library of Nathaniel Hawthorne, est. $2,000-3,000) beat the estimate, going for $7,703.
- Lot 397A (a first English edition of Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, est. $20,000-30,000) made $21,330.
And from the illustrations:
- Lot 575, Audubon's Carolina Parakeet, (est. $25,000-35,000) made $38,513.
- Lot 602 (a 1705 Visscher atlas, est. $10,000-15,000) fetched only $5,333.
- Lot 617 (a famous and excellent 1755 map of North America, est. $15,000-20,000) sold for $65,175.
Lot 601 (a 1574 Sebastian Munster world atlas, est. $10,000-12,000) failed to sell.
