July 2019 | Jeremy Dibbell

Rare Books &c. at Auction This Week

This week isn't quite as jam-packed as the last couple have been, but here's what I'll be watching:

At Christie's New York on Thursday, July 18, One Giant Leap: Celebrating Space Exploration 50 Years after Apollo 11, in 195 lots. Estimated at $7–9 million is the Apollo 11 LM Timeline Book, annotated by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in real time. Inscribed by Aldrin, this copy was previously sold by him at auction in 2007. A star chart used to determine the position of the Eagle on the moon, signed and inscribed by Aldrin, is estimated at $80,000–120,000. A number of other flight plans and additional lots containing objects used during the Apollo missions are also up for sale.

Forum Auctions holds an online sale of the remaining archives of F.A. Hayek on Thursday, in 21 lots. The manuscript of Hayek's "A Disquisition of the Reactionary Character of the Socialist Conception" (1978) is estimated at £20,000–30,000.

Courtesy of Litchfield County Auctions

Philip Roth's Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter, at auction this week.

On Saturday, July 20, Skinner, Inc. sells A Mystic Collection: Early Books, in 230 lots. The single-owner sale includes a Nuremberg Chronicle ($30,000–40,000); Rainerius de Pisis' Pantheologia (1477), estimated at $15,000–25,000; and a 1508 Latin Book of Hours (use of Rome) bound in red velvet ($15,000–20,000). Other interesting lots include a manuscript on parchment of Nicolaus de Ausmo's Supplementum Summae Pisanellae ($10,000–15,000); the Bridgewater Library copy of Samuel Clarke's Marrow of Ecclesiastical History (1654), with the vertical half-title present ($200–400).

Also on Saturday, Litchfield County Auctions will sell The Estate of Philip Roth + Select Additions, in 786 lots. A very wide range of Roth's possessions are available, so do have a look through the catalogue if you're interested: perhaps the most noteworthy for the purposes of this blog's readers are three of Roth's typewriters: an Olivetti Lettera 32 ($300–500; pictured); and two IBM Selectric models (Lot 20 at $100–150 and Lot 17 at $150–250). You can also bid on Roth's Samsonite suitcase, artwork and furniture from his home, &c.