Among the important prewar era books included in the sale are:
- Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms (estimate: $20,000-30,000), first edition, limited issue, and one of 10 presentation copies signed by Hemingway from a total edition of 510 copies, and with a binding by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, originally from the library of American author Owen Wister Jr. who was friends with Hemingway in the late 1920s
- The Hobbit or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien (estimate: $10,000-15,000), first American edition, first state with its original dust jacket, printed in Boston and New York by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1938. This rarity includes the “bowing hobbit” on the title-page, the color frontispiece inserted on a stub, and the endpapers bound opposite to the order of the List of Illustrations
- Ernest Vincent Wright's Gadsby. A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the Letter “E” (estimate: $5,000-7,000) - the first edition was printed in Los Angeles by Wetzel Publishing Co. in 1939, the only copy known to Potter & Potter's specialists that retains its rare dustjacket
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (estimate: $3,000-5,000), first edition, first issue with its original dustjacket
- F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (estimate: $3,000-5,000), first edition, first printing includes noteworthy language that would not appear in later editions including “chatter” for “echolalia” on p. 60, “northern” for “southern” on p. 119, “sick in tired” for “sickantired” on p. 205, and “Union Street station” for “Union Station” on p. 211.
Also going under the hammer is a first edition of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird (estimate: $10,000-15,000) with its first issue dustjacket with a photo of Lee credited to Truman Capote - it is sold with an autograph letter signed from Lee to the Smileys thanking them for her first copy of FIRSTS which she writes that she is subscribing to immediately, as well as the uncashed check for her subscription, signed “Nelle Harper Lee”. Elsewhere, Lot #332, is Larry McMurtry's personal copy of E.B. White's Here is New York (estimate: $4,000-6,000). Again, this first edition includes its original dustjacket and is inscribed by White to Mollie Panter-Downes, a British novelist and columnist for The New Yorker.
Finally, the sale rounds out with category spanning publications, archives, artwork, and ephemera:
- Benjamin Franklin's The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, which is estimated at $2,500-3,500. This first edition in English was published in London in 1793 by J. Parsons. This book was first printed in an unauthorized French translation in 1791, and then translated back into English for this edition.
- Illustrator Eric Gill's (1882-1940) The Four Gospels of the Lord Jesus Christ According to the Authorized Version of King James I, limited edition from 1921, one of 500 copies produced on Batchelor paper and with a binding by Sangorski & Sutcliffe (estimate: $10,000-15,000)
- An archive of material from a Japanese couple incarcerated at the Manzanar War Relocation Center from 1942-44 (estimate: $2,000-3,000) which includes documents, certificates, yearbooks, photographs, passports, and other paperwork. In 1922, Koji and Masai Watanabe emigrated to California. From 1942-1945, the couple was interned at the Manzanar concentration camp until the war was over, after which they settled in Chicago.
