Rare Autographs, Manuscripts, Books & Photographs will offer tremendous buying opportunities to collectors and institutions alike. Over 425 lots will cross the auction block, including a significant subsection (30+ lots) of Abraham Lincoln material, ranging from Lincoln manuscripts, signed letters and documents; Lincoln photography and works on paper; Lincoln hair and assassination relics; and autographed material from Mary Todd Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth. Our June sale will also include Part IV of the Yousuf & Estrellita Karsh Estate, including signed artwork and books presented to and retained in the personal collection of celebrity photographer Yousuf Karsh. Don’t forget to check out U.S. Presidents, Early America, Science, Space/Aviation, Literature, and Art.
Sale highlights include:
U.S. Presidents
Lot 59 is an Abraham Lincoln autograph letter signed, written in Springfield, Illinois on February 16, 1842, and addressed to fellow attorney Garland B. Shelledy. The letter is one of the earliest Lincoln letters ever offered at auction; only two listings of comparably early date have been sold, both for amounts north of $50,000. In the letter, Lincoln advises Shelledy how to present bankruptcy cases in federal court following President John Tyler’s approval of legislation on February 1, 1842. The new law permitted debtors to apply for debt forgiveness following two back-to-back economic panics, and was only in effect for one year.
Lot 84 is a John Wilkes Booth autograph letter signed dated April 4, 1864, during a period when an increasingly radicalized Booth began to crystallize plans to kidnap Lincoln. Booth wrote this 2pp letter to an unmarried female admirer, possibly a romantic interest, from the St. Charles Theatre in New Orleans, where he had been performing Shakespearean tragedies and contemporary melodramas. Our June auction also includes a Booth annotated scenery list for Richard III dating from ca. 1862, as well as a Laura Keene playbill dating about 10 years before Our American Cousin.
Lot 49 is a John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson signed photograph showing the President and Vice President striding down the White House South Lawn driveway on August 31, 1963, signed by both and presented to Cecil B. Stoughton, the official White House photographer. Dual JFK and LBJ signed photos are extremely scarce, and this one dates just three months before the assassination.
Science
Lot 402 is a Francis Crick signed limited edition first offprint of Nature, Vol. 171, from April 25, 1953, signed by Crick and other molecular biologists involved in discovering and mapping DNA. The offprint, which includes three scientific papers including Crick’s co-written “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” was the first public announcement of a DNA model, and includes a diagram of the famous double helix.
Lot 406 is a vintage Underwood & Underwood photograph of Albert Einstein, signed by the physicist in ca. April 1921 and presented to J. Miman, an employee of prominent Japanese manufacturer Okura & Co. Within the decades leading up to World War II, Okura would provide munitions to Imperial Japan. Ironically, Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity would lead to atomic bomb development, which in turn led to the end of the war and the dismantling of the Japanese military infrastructure which autograph seeker J. Miman was a part of.
There are six meteorites in our June sale, representing both lunar and iron types ranging in size from about 80 grams to 800 grams. Present are outstanding examples of Borzya Pallasite, Muonionalusta, Aletai, Agoudal, Gadamis, and Lot 189, a highly collectible Laâyoune 002 lunar meteorite weighing in at approximately 176g. The majority of the specimens come with Space Collective COAs.
Lot 184, Borzya Pallasite meteorite
Literature
Lot 357 is a Jack Kerouac autograph letter signed with outstanding travel and literary content written in Marin County, California on August 16, 1947. In this letter to lifelong friend Edward White, Jr., Jack Kerouac talks about past wanderings through Wyoming and California, and about possible future expeditions aboard a “’round-the-world passenger ship.” Kerouac mentions several real-life inspirations for memorable characters in On the Road, Visions of Cody, and Book of Cody, and reports that he has just completed a 40,000-word screenplay, probably the never-published “Christmas in New York.”
Lot 368 is an Ayn Rand autograph manuscript, being an original leaf, page 409, from her manuscript for Atlas Shrugged. The heavily edited manuscript page features 80 words in Rand’s hand. The page describes Dagny Taggart watching John Galt’s plane take off from Galt’s Gutch in Part III, Chapter II, “The Utopia of Greed.” The manuscript page was saved by Rand’s assistant Barbara Brandon.
Lot 375 is a J.R.R. Tolkien autograph letter signed, dated November 17, 1957, and addressed to a California medical student and Lord of the Rings superfan. In it, Tolkien vehemently denies that there is any underlying symbolism in his beloved trilogy, especially of any political nature, but the writer does admit that Middle-earth races exhibit traits characteristic of their respective peoples: “sloth & stupidity among hobbits, pride and escapism among Elves, grudge and greed in Dwarf-hearts, and folly and wickedness among the ‘Kings of Men,’ and treachery and power-lust even among the ‘Wizards’…”
World Leaders
Lot 346 is a Vladimir Lenin signed document, in his role as Chairman of the Defense Council, written at the Kremlin, Moscow, Soviet Russia on June 20, 1919. Co-signed by Alexander Tsyurupa, People’s Commissar for Food Supplies, the document ordered local authorities in Crimea to redirect cheese and canned fruits to sick children in northern Russia. The directive may have been militarily strategic as well as philanthropic, as Crimea fell before the advancing White Army just three days later.
Civil Rights
Lot 229 is a Martin Luther King, Jr. typed letter signed dated April 27, 1964, addressed to a fellow minister, Reverend Clifton M. Weihe, who had sent King an “Easter Day” message advocating for Negro groups to support the rights of Native Americans. In his response, King heartily agreed with Weihe that Blacks and Native Americans were people of color facing the same struggle against racial discrimination. Throughout the Civil Rights movement, King remained supportive of indigenous people’s rights, lobbying for tribal sovereignty and land protection.
Sports
Lot 280 is a Bruce Lee 3pp autograph letter signed dated ca. August 1964. In it, Lee writes to Bill Evans of Black Belt Magazine about the symbolism of the yin and yang seal of Bruce Lee’s martial arts school, the Jun Gang Fu Institute. To illustrate his point, Lee pens a black and white yin and yang sketch on the first page, explaining that it represents two complementary halves of one whole. Lee continues that the symbol represents a martial artist’s need for an “opponent to complete the other half of a whole.”
There is much more to discover in our June auction.
We hope you can join us!
