Auction Preview: June Sales

- There will be a Bibliophile Sale at Bloomsbury London on 2 June, in 376 lots.

- PBA Galleries will sell Charles Bukowski & His Circle: The Collection of Ross Runfola, in 343 lots.

- Also on 2 June, Swann has Maps, Atlases, Natural History and Ephemera, in 321 lots.

- Sotheby's London will sell Music and Continental Books & Manuscripts on 8 June, in 376 lots. The top-estimated lot is Mahler's own copy of his Third Symphony, with his autograph revisions. It is estimated at £100,000-150,000.

- Also on 8 June, Christie's London has Valuable Printed Books and Manuscripts, in 81 lots. The most spectacular of these (and in fact the most spectacular thing I've seen at auction in a very long time) is the Pillone Library, a collection of eighteen works in seventeen volumes, all with painted fore-edges or drawings on vellum by Cesare Vecellio. These are really remarkable pieces of artwork, created for members of the Pillone family in the 1580s. The volumes will first be offered as a single lot (estimated at £1,100,000-1,600,000); if they don't sell that way, the volumes are going to be sold separately. There are some other important volumes in the sale, as well as an interesting collection of manuscript journals written by Nassau William Senior (1790-1864), estimated at £50,000-80,000.

- At Christie's London on 13 June, Printed Books and Manuscripts, in 399 lots.

- On 14 June at Bloomsbury London, Books from the stock of the late John Sperr of Fisher and Sperr London, in 169 lots. A complete set of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie (1751-1780) is estimated at £10,000-15,000; William Curtis' The Botanical Magazine in 167 volumes could fetch £15,000-20,000.

- PBA Galleries will sell Fine Literature, Illustrated & Children's Books, and Fine Books in All Fields, in 446 lots.

- At Sotheby's New York on 17 June, Fine Books and Manuscripts, in 172 lots, and this is quite a sale! A Marc Chagall sketchbook rates a $600,000-900,000 estimate, while the opera glasses Lincoln took to the theater on the night of his assassination are estimated at $500,000-700,000. Robert E. Lee's 20 April 1861 letter to his brother in which Lee notes his resignation from the U.S. Army could fetch $400,000-600,000, and a flag from the C.S.S. Alabama is estimated at $200,000-400,000. An archive of René Magritte letters rates a $150,000-200,000 estimate. A 1684 first quarto edition of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" could sell for $12,000-18,000. Lots more goodies in here - do browse the catalog.

- Christie's New York will sell Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts on 23 June. Preview to come.