A fairly quiet month for auctions, July, but here's what's due to come up on the block:
- The third selection of the Arcana Collection will be sold at Christie's London on 6 July, in 29 lots. Fully half the lots have estimates of £100,000 or more, with the top lot being the Imhof Prayerbook, a truly spectacular illuminated manuscript from 1511 (estimated at £1.5-2 million). An impressive array of books of hours will also be on offer.
- Bloomsbury London holds a Bibliophile Sale on 7 July, in 408 lots. A good number of Lewis Carroll items will start off the sale.
- On 14 July Sotheby's London will sell a selection of English Literature, History, Children's Books and Illustration, in 159 lots. An archive of documents from the Sheffield Football Club (considered the originator of modern soccer rules) is estimated at £800,000-1,200,000, while an autograph draft manuscript of Jane Austen's unfinished novel The Watsons could fetch £200,000-300,000. A first edition of Wuthering Heights rates a £90,000-130,000 estimate. James Joyce's family passport from WWI could sell for £50,000-70,000, while a first edition of Gulliver's Travels rates a £40,000-50,000 estimate.
- Also on 14 July, PBA Galleries sells Americana, Travel & Natural History, and Cartography with material from the Calvin P. Otto Collection, in 358 lots. The top estimate goes to a copy of The Latter Day Saints' Selection of Hymns (1861), at $20,000-30,000. An archive of China trade letters and documents is estimated at $12,000-18,000.
- Bloomsbury London has a sale of books, maps, prints and philately relating to Travel, Natural History & Sport on 14 July, in a whopping 707 lots.
