Jane Austen Letter, Middlemarch in Parts, Stowe Manuscript: Auction Preview

Here are the sales I'll be keeping an eye on through the end of 2025!

At Heritage Auctions on Monday, December 15, a Rare Books Signature Auction, in 610 lots. A set of first-impression copies of the three Lord of the Rings books will sell for more than $55,000 and a J. R. R. Tolkien manuscript note requesting a late revision to the text of The Return of the King will reach more than $23,000. Two pages of early manuscript draft text from the first chapter of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin has a starting bid of $75,000, and a copy of George Eliot's Middlemarch in original parts starts at $30,000.

On Tuesday, December 16, Ader sells Explorations, Atlases and Cartography in the 19th Century in the Collection of the Société Géologique de France, in 89 lots. A complete copy of Loewy and Puiseux's Atlas photographique de la Lune (1896–1910) rates the top estimate at €30,000–40,000.

At New England Book Auctions on December 16, 219 lots of Fine Books & Ephemera.

Swann Galleries sells Fine Photographs on December 16, in 307 lots. Sharing the top estimate of $20,000–30,000 are Alfred Eisenstaedt's "Children at a Puppet Theatre, Paris" (1963; printed 1991 and numbered 171/250) and Robert Frank's "Beaufort, South Carolina" (1955, printed 1977).

At Sotheby's New York on December 16, Fine Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana, in 99 lots. Expected to lead the way is a four-page 1805 letter from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra, estimated at $200,000–300,000. A small group of J. D. Salinger letters along with an inscribed first edition of The Catcher in the Rye and several additional items is expected to reach $120,000–180,000. A deluxe copy of the 1910 Catalogue of the Collection of Jewels and Precious Works of Art in J. P. Morgan's collection is estimated at $40,000–60,000.

Sotheby's Paris sells 339 lots of the Bibliotheca Brookeriana VIII on Wednesday, December 17, with a copy of the 1546 Paris edition of the Hypnerotomachie in a contemporary Parisian calf binding by the Wotton Binder C for Marcus Fugger sharing the top estimate of €200,000–300,000 with a sixteenth-century French alchemical manuscript by Paradis bound by the Pecking Crow Binder for Anne de Montmorency. A Pillone binding on three medieval commentaries on Aristotle is expected to sell for €120,000–180,000.

At Sotheby's New York on December 17, 115 lots of Important Judaica. A manuscript Hebrew Bible from Spain, dated to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, could sell for $1.5–2.5 million, and a fourteenth-century complete and standalone Haftarot manuscript is expected to fetch €200,000–300,000.

Bonhams London sells 173 lots in a Travel & Exploration sale on December 17, with the George Yacoub collection of about 600 maps of the Levant, dating from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries, expected to sell for £10,000–20,000. A second issue copy (1781) of the surreptitious "officer on board's" account of Cook's second voyage, published first in 1776, A Voyage Round the World, in the Years MDCCLXXII, LXXIII, LXXIV, LXXV is expected to sell for £8,000–12,000.

At Bonhams New York on Thursday, December 18, Fine Books & Manuscripts Including Americana, in 261 lots. Jean-Francois Podevin's original artwork for Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and a 1529 Martin Luther autograph letter to theologian Gerhard Wiskamp are each estimated at $100,000–150,000. A first edition copy of Jane Austen's Emma (1816), in contemporary binding, is estimated at $40,000–60,000.

PBA Galleries sells 470 lots of Americana – Manuscripts – Baseball – Travel & Exploration – Maps & Views on December 18, with traveler Paul West's nineteenth-century letters to his parents from around the world expected to sell for $8,000–12,000, as is the 43-volume 1821 publication The World in Miniature.