Scottish Music, Gould's Birds of Britain, Durrell Presentation Copies: Auction Preview

Here are a few sales I'll be keeping an eye on over the next couple of weeks:

At New England Book Auctions on Tuesday, August 12, 215 lots of Fine Books & Ephemera.

There will be a few items of interest in the Bonhams Skinner Americana online sale ending on August 12, including a 1567 woodcut map of the Americas ($2,000–3,000) and a chromolithograph of Audubon's blue jay from the 1859 Bien edition ($700–900).

Freeman's | Hindman sells 413 lots on Wednesday, August 13 in their Summer Reading sale, with first edition copies of the Lord of the Rings trilogy rating the top estimate at $4,000–5,000. Seven Lawrence Durrell books from Henry Miller's library, three inscribed by Durrell to Miller, are estimated at $1,000–1,500. A proof copy of Durrell's Cefalu (1947) inscribed by Durrell to Miller and accompanied by two Durrell letters is being sold separately ($600–800). Several group lots of Arion Press and Limited Editions Club titles are also worth a look.

At RR Auction on August 13, Fine Autographs and Artifacts, in 837 lots, including a remarkable Disney artifact: a "continuity sketch book" for the opening minutes of Pinocchio (1940), with 114 pages containing 48 storyboard drawings and nearly 200 photographic storyboard images. This is expected to realize more than $150,000. A November 1911 letter from Sun Yat-Sen to London friends announcing his impending arrival in London is estimated at more than $60,000.

Forum Auctions will sell 288 lots of Books and Works on Paper on Thursday, August 14, with a 1529 Paris edition of the Libri de re rustica expected to lead the way at £3,000–4,000. A nearly complete run of The Australasian Sketcher with Pen and Pencil (1873–1889) is estimated at £2,000–3,000. A first edition of Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) could sell for £400–600.

At PBA Galleries on August 14, 321 lots of Photography & Fine Art – Fine Press & Fine Bindings – with Rare & Antiquarian Books. A copy of the 1662 musical collection Cantus, songs and fancies published at Aberdeen, Scotland is estimated at $8,000–12,000; this copy lacks eight leaves, but is just the second copy known (the other is at the Huntington Library). An extensive group of sketches, watercolors, photographs and other material related to the artists Albert and Mary Stevens could sell for $6,000–9,000.

Potter & Potter Auctions sell 381 lots on Saturday, August 16 in a sale titled I Know What You're Thinking: The Collection of the Amazing Kreskin. Much of interest here to the collector of magic/mentalist material.

At Tennants Auctioneers on Friday, August 22, Books, Maps & Manuscripts, in 135 lots. A first edition of John Gould's Birds of Great Britain (1862–1873) rates the top estimate at £25,000–35,000. John Miller's An Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus (1770–1777) could sell for £8,000–12,000. A group of forty-two seventeenth-century manuscript calendars of prisoners from the Stafford Gaol is expected to sell for £3,000–5,000.