Fine Books and Manuscripts including the Collection of Barbara J. Land. [ Bonhams, auction catalogue, sale date: 22 September 2015 ]

Bonhams, New York, auction catalogue for the sale held on 22nd September 2015. Laminated illustrated wrappers, 4to, 27 cm,. 146 pp, colour ills. 291 lots. The sale sections comprised: The Collection of Barbara J, Land Lots1-51; Early Printed Books & Manuscripts 62 - 72; Travel & Color Plate 73 -103; Art & Fine Press 110-138; Literature 130-165; Modern Literature 106-211; Americana 212-276; World History including Painting & Music 276-291.From the introduction: "..the Land library includes many of the most important Printing and the Mind of Man titles, including fine copies of the first edition in English of Erasmus' In Praise of Folly, Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population, Karl Marx's Das Kapital; Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, and the Nuremberg Chronicle. The Land collection also includes several natural history and travel highlights, including Audubon's Birds… and Quadrupeds… in octavo and a set of Cook's Voyages…". From the foreword: "After the 51 lots in the Land Collection, we move on to Early Printed and Continental Material, which includes the fourth collected edition of Chaucer's Workes (1550) and an album of hand-colored news sheets from 1561 -1582 issued by Franz Hogenberg, among other highlights. The Travel and Color Plate section features some wonderful rarities, including William Edwards Sketches in Scinde (1846), the only color plate book devoted to Sindh; and John Thomson's Illustrations of China and its People (1873-1874), the remarkable photographic record of 19th century China. In our Art and Fine Press section, we offer two desirable collections of Goya prints, the fifth and fourth editions, respectively, of Los Caprichios and Los Desastres de la Guerre, as well as a copy of Genet's Querelle du Brest illuustrated by Cocteau, one of 15 deluxe copies with an original drawing and an additional suite of plates. In our Literature section, we offer titles by Clemens and Dickens, an autograph letter of C.L. Dodgson to a young admirer, a first edition of Johnson's Dictionary, a large-paper copy of the first edition in English of Plato's Republic, and a signed copy of Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1882). Our Modern Literature section features titles by Ray Bradbury, Anthony Burgess, Ralph Ellison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Heller, Ernest Hemingway, Frank Herbert, Christopher Isherwood, James Joyce, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, and others. Two of our favorite pieces in this session are Siegfried Sassoon's copy of the limited first edition Seven Pillars of Wisdom, given to him by T.E. Lawrence, and Franz Kafka's 1922 Czechoslovak passport. .. The [Americana ] section opens with a fine copy of Felipe de Neve's Reglamento,.. (Mexico City; 1784), the first laws of Alta California. A few lots later we offer a superb copy of Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War (1865-1866), a stunning visual history of the Civil War, followed by 2 volumes from Thomas Jefferson's personal library, a subscriber's copy of the folio edition of the McKenney & Hall History of the Indian Tribes of North America, and a 1775 letter from the Colegio Apostolico in Mexico City to all five California missions, endorsed and signed by all five mission leaders, including Junipero Serra, The sale closes with a small collection of world manuscripts, including examples from artists such as Constable, Delacroix, Manet, Miro, Mondrian and Pissarro and musicians such as Liszt, Massenet and Wagner. Slight tear to spine, otherwise Near Fine.