Auction 08 Auction 08 - A Legacy in Ink: A Rare Book & Autograph Sale from L’Autographe Auction

Auction 08 — A Legacy in Ink

Rare Books, Manuscripts, Autographs & Historical Documents

This London auction brings together an exceptionally rich and diverse group of rare books, manuscripts, autograph letters and historical documents spanning more than five centuries of European intellectual, artistic, political and scientific history. The sale is distinguished by the presence of several items of major international importance.

Among the most historically significant items is the original Warsaw French printing of the Polish Constitution of 3 May 1791 — Europe's first modern constitution and the second in the world after that of the United States.

The early printing section features the monumental 1470 Roman edition of Saint Jerome's Epistles by Sweynheym and Pannartz, alongside a strong group of incunabula including works by Duns Scotus, Bonaventure, and Pomponius Mela. The humanist section offers the 1517 Venetian folio of Plato's Opera omnia, Aldine editions of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and an apparently unrecorded Rouen edition of Virgil's Bucolics.

The scientific and medical section includes Newton's Principia Mathematica (Amsterdam, 1723), the last revised edition published in his lifetime; Harvey's De motu cordis (Rotterdam, 1654), one of the most important medical books ever written; and Manzini's L'occhiale all'occhio (Bologna, 1660) with autograph authorial corrections.

The manuscript section presents two exceptional highlights: a monumental illuminated antiphonal leaf depicting St Benedict, attributed to Francesco del Cossa, and a large thirteenth-century Greek Gospel Lectionary probably connected with the Hodegon monastery of Constantinople.

Important musical autographs include Puccini's revision for the brass peroration of Edgar, Debussy's letter concerning Jeux, two letters by Liszt, a group of letters by Rossini, and Verdi's correspondence with Ghislanzoni, the librettist of Aida. The literary and artistic section features autographs by Dickens, Dumas, Flaubert, Zola, Chateaubriand, Hugo, Matisse, Rodin and Ingres, among others.

The auction culminates with an exceptional series of sixteen Napoleonic-era autographs, including the Barras political manuscript written while he was still Director, nine diplomatic letters by Baron Bignon from the Duchy of Warsaw, and Viscount Melville's letter written days after Napoleon's surrender aboard HMS Bellerophon.