Writers' Autographs: Five Rare Books for Collectors
Swann Galleries
George Bernard Shaw
Highlights from Swann Galleries' April 9 Autographs auction include:
Friedrich Nietzsche
An uncommon c. 1884-1900 signed photograph cabinet card of Nietzsche, inscribed to Meta von Salis ("Fräulein von Salis"), 1882 vignetted bust portrait by Gustav Adolf Schutze showing him as he appears on the frontispiece of the 1893 edition of his Also Sprach Zarathustra.
An artwork owned by Melville while living at 26th Street, NYC, signed by him c. 1863-91 ("H. Melville / 140, E. 26") in pencil, on verso of engraved fine art print previously owned by him Parmigiani Amica after a work by Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, engraved by Robert Strange in 1774.
The 1842 signatures of both Hugo and Adams on the last stanza of Hugo's poem À mes odes comprising Hugo's"Victor H.," in French, six lines beginning, "Le poëte, inspiré lorsque la terre ignore, / Ressemble à ces grands monts." followed by Adams' seven lines, written on the same sheet below Hugo's inscription, beginning, "Another Translation / The Bard is like you hill-top high / A sunrise, Shining to the sky."
Two autograph letters (Wallingford, Oxfordshire, August 9, and London, 19 December 19, 1960s) signed "Agatha Mallowan" to publisher Sherman Phelps Platt, Jr., indignantly declining to give permission to allow a stranger to write a biography about her ("I'm not dead yet") and mentioning that, after a good flight home from New York she and her husband were "plunged into a Sea of Xmas preparations."
Autograph note (London, February 2, 1909) signed "G.B.S." to A.D. Corrick Jr., on a postcard discussing the importance of religious education to establishing a pupil's moral principles, preprinted with message beginning "I am much obliged to you for your letter"
