July 2011 | Jeremy Dibbell

Auction Preview: July Sales

A fairly quiet month for auctions, July, but here's what's due to come up on the block:

- Sotheby's London will sell Western Manuscripts and Miniatures on 5 July, in 129 lots. The top-estimated lot is an eleventh-century missal from Tours, which could fetch £80,000-100,000.

- The third selection of the Arcana Collection will be sold at Christie's London on 6 July, in 29 lots. Fully half the lots have estimates of £100,000 or more, with the top lot being the Imhof Prayerbook, a truly spectacular illuminated manuscript from 1511 (estimated at £1.5-2 million). An impressive array of books of hours will also be on offer.

- Bloomsbury London holds a Bibliophile Sale on 7 July, in 408 lots. A good number of Lewis Carroll items will start off the sale.

- On 14 July Sotheby's London will sell a selection of English Literature, History, Children's Books and Illustration, in 159 lots. An archive of documents from the Sheffield Football Club(considered the originator of modern soccer rules) is estimated at £800,000-1,200,000, while an autograph draft manuscript of Jane Austen's unfinished novel The Watsons could fetch £200,000-300,000. A first edition of Wuthering Heights rates a £90,000-130,000 estimate. James Joyce's family passport from WWI could sell for £50,000-70,000, while a first edition ofGulliver's Travels rates a £40,000-50,000 estimate.

- Also on 14 July, PBA Galleries sells Americana, Travel & Natural History, and Cartographywith material from the Calvin P. Otto Collection, in 358 lots. The top estimate goes to a copy ofThe Latter Day Saints' Selection of Hymns (1861), at $20,000-30,000. An archive of China trade letters and documents is estimated at $12,000-18,000.

- Bloomsbury London has a sale of books, maps, prints and philately relating to Travel, Natural History & Sport on 14 July, in a whopping 707 lots.