Medley of rare books to be auctioned at PBA Galleries March 7

SAN FRANCISCO – On Thursday, March 7, PBA Galleries will offer a sale of Fine Books: A Biblio-Medley for All Tastes. On the auction block will be over 500 lots of books and other materials in all subject matters and all fields, from 15th century works on religion to modern illustrated books, with finely bound books, finely printed books, literature, history, Americana, travel and much more. Bid absentee or live online through LiveAuctioneers.

Highlights of the sale include rare materials from international print history. The section includes The Sermon on Saint Stephen by Ludovicus Imolensis, a scarce incunable printed by the renowned Stephan Plannck in Rome circa 1488-1490 (est. $1,000-$5,000).

Specimen Pages of Korean Moveable Types from Dawson’s Bookshop highlights the Korean invention of moveable metal type 200 years before Gutenberg (est. $1,000-$1,500).

The printed Quran displays stunning hand-illuminations heightened in gold and printed marginal notes (est. $4,000-$6,000).

In book arts, PBA one of the greatest 19th century English color plates books: Picturesque Tour of the Seine (below) by Jean Baptiste Balthazar Sauvan has 24 hand-colored aquatint plates and is one of only 50 large paper copies of the first edition (est. $4,000-$6,000).

Children’s and adolescent literature will be in the sale. The first American edition of Johanna Spyri’s classic Heidi, published in Boston in 1885, is virtually the earliest obtainable edition in the English language, due to the extreme rarity of the London edition (est. $1,000-$5,000).

Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Waddle Book, published by Blue Ribbon Books in 1934, is complete with the four Waddle plates intact and bound in as issued, the brass pieces, the runway down which the characters waddle, the dust jacket, and the wrap-around band (est. $3,000-$5,000).

PBA Galleries has John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, created at the Arion Press in an edition of 175 copies, with lithographs, etchings and additional artwork by Richard Avedon, Jim Dine and others, all housed in a brushed stainless steel movie canister (est. $4,000-$6,000).

Other featured lots include a first edition and family presentation copy of Zane Grey’s Tales of the Angler’s Eldorado New Zealand, inscribed by the author to his wife Dolly (est. $1,000-$1,500); and a rare copy of An American Genius: The Life of Ernest Orlando Lawrence, signed by over 40 scientists, veterans of the Manhattan Project, laboratory staff, and others, ten of them Nobel Laureates, in 1968 (est. $8,000-$12,000).

The sale will begin at 11 a.m. Pacific Time. in San Francisco. For more information, contact PBA Galleries at 415-989-2665 or pba@pbagalleries.com.