From Plato to Potter: Classic minds, first editions and magical rarities
This quarter's most expensive sales range from ancient philosophy to modern fiction. Highlights include the first English translations of Plato and Aristotle, a Cicero printed by Benjamin Franklin, and a first edition of Jane Austen's posthumous novels. Rare Harry Potter items, a signed Vonnegut, an Art Deco railroad archive and a portrait of Chief Justice John Marshall complete the list.
Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen - £30,000
Published together in December 1817, months after Jane Austen's death, these two novels bookend her career. Northanger Abbey was the first novel she wrote, and Persuasion is arguably her most philosophically sophisticated.
A biographical notice by her brother Henry publicly named her as the author for the first time.
This complete four-volume first edition, one of just 1,750 copies, survives in its original boards. The binding appears to be a previously unrecorded publisher's variant, and every volume carries the emerald green bookplate of the Scottish Clan Moncrieffe.
Sold by D&D Galleries
Jane Austen has always been of great interest to us. We have bought and sold first editions of all her works over the past 43 years and are thrilled to add to the bibliographic history. We were fortunate enough to acquire this set which was a duplicate copy from a British Institution. We dare you not to swoon while reading Persuasion as Captain Frederick Wentworth declares his love to Anne Elliot 'I am half agony, half hope.... Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever... Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.'
Aristotle's Politiques by Aristotle - £26,000
"Man is by nature a political animal." Aristotle's Politics asks questions that still drive political thought, such as who should govern and who counts as a citizen. Thinkers from Hobbes and Locke to Marx built on its ideas or argued against them, and it helped shape the American Revolution.
This first English edition, printed in London in 1598, has a modern period-style binding of brown goatskin with elaborate gilt tooling. Woodcut initials and ornaments decorate the text, and early readers left ink notes in Latin in the margins.
Sold by Type Punch Matrix
I've always been drawn to Aristotle's systematic mind. This is the case even when I disagree with him! He is ever seeking clarity in the service of truth, a philosopher who takes nothing for granted — and encourages us to do the same. Important editions like this one are a monument to these values, a reflection of his open mindedness, careful reasoning, and innovative thinking.
Harry Potter Series Complete Deluxe Set by J.K. Rowling - £17,000
This is a complete set of the seven Harry Potter novels in first deluxe editions. Each volume is bound in decorative cloth with gilt edges and a ribbon marker. J.K. Rowling has boldly signed the first volume.
The set is unique because of what Thomas Taylor added. He painted the original cover of Philosopher's Stone in 1996, when he was a recent art-school graduate working in a Cambridge bookshop. Here he has signed the book and added four original drawings, including a full-page sketch of Harry under the Sorting Hat.
Sold by Raptis Rare Books
Collection of 625+ Maps, Plans, and Architectural Drawings for the Cincinnati Union Terminal, 1920s–1980s - £15,000
When it opened in 1933, Cincinnati Union Terminal was among the last of America's great railroad stations, an Art Deco landmark crowned by the largest half-dome in the Western Hemisphere. This archive documents every decade of its life, from 1920s construction through the 1980s shopping mall that briefly filled the concourse.
More than 625 maps and plans, most on architectural tracing paper, cover the steelwork, outer buildings, track approaches and later rehabilitations. Business papers survive too, among them the first mortgage, timetables and rule books.
Sold by Dale Steffey Books
The Republic of Plato in Ten Books by Plato - £15,000
Printed in Glasgow in 1763, this is the first English translation of Plato's Republic, the great dialogue on justice. Its translator, Harry Spens, was a parish minister in Fife and a respected classicist who hoped to "stir up the youth to the study of the Ancients." Richard Garnett later praised it as "clearly the work of a scholar."
The printers, brothers Robert and Andrew Foulis, were known as "the Elzevirs of Britain" for the severely plain elegance of their typography.
Sold by Raptis Rare Books
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling - £14,280
Before Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was published in July 1999, Bloomsbury printed two issues of uncorrected proofs. This copy belongs to the first and scarcer issue, bound in purple wrappers. Fewer than 50 were printed, and perhaps as few as 31 were ever made.
All the pages of the story are present. The proof is accompanied by copies of The Daily Prophet and The Quibbler, the wizarding world's newspaper and magazine, as seen in the films.
Sold by St Marys Books And Prints
Cato Major, or His Discourse of Old-Age by Marcus Tullius Cicero - £14,000
Printed by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1744, this first American edition of Cicero's essay on growing old is often called the finest book ever to come from Franklin's press. The translation, with explanatory notes, was by James Logan, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. According to Sabin, it was the second classical author translated and printed in North America.
This copy is in contemporary mottled calf with floral gilt borders and gilt edges, and it carries an early ownership signature.
Sold by G.S. MacManus Co.
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell - £13,500
When Jarrold and Sons published Black Beauty in 1877, few could have guessed it would become the most celebrated animal story of the 19th century.
Narrated by the horse himself, Anna Sewell's only book was a heartfelt plea for kinder treatment of working horses. She died just months after it was published.
This first printing survives in the publisher's green cloth with its gilt horse's head medallion. Unrestored and exceptionally well preserved, it comes in a custom morocco clamshell box by Patron.
Sold by Burnside Rare Books
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut - £10,800
Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Dresden when the city was firebombed in 1945, and he turned the experience into one of the defining novels of the 1960s. Billy Pilgrim survives the firestorm only to become "unstuck in time," drifting through his life out of order. There are also space aliens.
This 1969 first printing is signed with a self-portrait sketch. It came from Joe Petro III, the printer of Vonnegut's silkscreens, and includes Petro's note: "Kurt was nice enough to sign it for you."
Sold by Downtown Brown Books
Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the finest novels of the 1960s. A great book in stellar condition with a fabulous signature and solid provenance makes for an unbeatable addition to any personal library.
Portrait of Chief Justice John Marshall by J. Phillip Schmand, after Henry Inman - £10,500
John Marshall was Chief Justice of the United States from 1801 to 1835, longer than anyone else. He made the Supreme Court an equal branch of government and established its power to strike down unconstitutional laws.
In 1831, the 76-year-old sat for the painter Henry Inman in Philadelphia. The press praised the likeness, and Marshall liked it so much that he bought a copy for his family.
In 1912, the New York portraitist J. Phillip Schmand painted this oil version after Inman's original, which now hangs at the National Constitution Center.
Sold by Seth Kaller Inc.
