Bookman Maurice F. Neville's Collection to Auction
The Call of the Wild inscribed by Jack London
Highlights from the collection of Maurice F. Neville featuring association copies, manuscripts and letters will go under the hammer at Heritage Auctions on November 18.
Neville's love of books and literature began when he was growing up on a farm in Indiana. As an adult, as well as assembling a monumental collection of modern literature of 20th century authors he also collected books, letters and ephemera relating to other areas of popular culture, music, sports, Hollywood and cinema.
He kick-started his collection when he and his wife Marcia drove to see the collection of former bookshop owner Norman Unger, a 9,000 volume collection from which Neville said he initially wanted about 200. Instead, he bought the entire collection outright, and embarked on a decades-long career as a bookseller and publisher. Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of his shop Maurice F. Neville Rare Books in Gonzales-Ramirez Adobe in Santa Barbara, California.
A longtime member of the Grolier Club in New York, Neville enjoyed acquiring items on his extensive travels across the country and abroad, dominating the three-part sale of literature from the library of Jonathan Goodwin at Sotheby Parke Bernet in 1977-78 in New York, and kept up until he died in December last year.
His avid interest in Ernest Hemingway also led him into the world of bullfighting, and the sale contains a large section devoted to the sport in posters, broadsides, ephemera and original artwork.
Highlights include:
- an Orson Welles signed, third revised final draft for Citizen Kane (starting bid: $15,000)
- a Bob Dylan autographed manuscript with the working lyrics to Man on the Street ($20,000)
- a Robert Frost autographed fair copy signed of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening ($5,000)
- The Call of the Wild inscribed by Jack London ($750)
- an F. Scott Fitzgerald autographed letter signed to composer, music critic and author Deems Taylor ($7,500)
- Death in the Afternoon, inscribed by Ernest Hemingway to the daughter of the Spanish Ambassador ($2,500)
- Red Harvest first edition, inscribed by Dashiell Hammett to Sam Marx of MGM ($10,000)
