Another auction with one Jane Austen title:  a first edition of Mansfield Park sold today at Sotheby’s for $21,250 ~

Sotheby’s  Fine Books and Manuscripts, Sale N08602, 
11 Dec 09, New York.  Session 2

 Lot 75 ~ AUSTEN, JANE

10,000—15,000 USD
Lot Sold.  Hammer Price with Buyer’s Premium:  21,250 USD

 Description: 

Mansfield Park. London: Printed for T. Egerton, 1814    1^st edition. 

3 volumes, 12mo (6⅞ x 10 in.; 750 x 553 mm). Half-titles, paper watermarked 1812; (1): tear to lower right corner of C1, loss of lower right corner of G7; (2): top of title-page cropped, closed tears on H6–7 touching 2 lines of text, loss to lower right margin of O3, lacks terminal blank O4; (3) loss to right margin of B5, loss of right upper corners of I7–8 costing one letter on I8v, lacks advertisement leaf R4 at end. Contemporary half polished calf over marbled boards, ruled in gilt, smooth spines gilt, endpapers and edges plain; joints cracked or starting, head of spines of vols. 1–2 chipped, waist and foot of spine of vol. 3 chipped. Red morocco backed folding case.

There were also a number of Shakespeare titles sold, a Dickens, a George Eliot, as well as an early illustrated Frankenstein by Mary Shelley:

LOT 246  SHELLEY, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

5,000—7,000 USD
Lot Sold.  Hammer Price with Buyer’s Premium:  7,500 USD

Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. Revised, Corrected, and Illustrated with a New Introduction by the Author. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831 

Bound with:  Charles Brockden Brown. Edgar Huntly; or The Sleep Walker, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bently, 1831

 2 works in one volume, 8vo (6¼ x 4 in.; 159 x 102 mm). Engraved frontispiece and title-page vignette in Frankenstein by T. Von Holst; lacks final blank in vol. I, paper adhesion on II:B3r costing one word on A8v. Nineteenth-century full polished calf, central frame tooled in blind, gilt foliate border, the spine gilt in 5 compartments (2 reserved for red and green morocco lettering pieces), marbled endpapers and edges; minor rubbing at spine ends. Quarter brown morocco folding case.

First illustrated edition and third edition overall of Frankenstein, from “Bentley’s Standard Novels Series” (Vol. IX, first series), with Brown’s novel being Vol. X. In her introduction, Mary Shelley states that the alterations she has made to the novel are “principally those of style. I have changed no portion of the story, nor introduced any new ideas or circumstances. I have mended the language where it was so bald as to interfere with the interest of the narrative; and these changes occur almost exclusively in the beginning of the first volume [the 1818 first edition was issued in three volumes]. Throughout they are entirely confined to such parts as mere adjuncts to the story, leaving the core and substance of it untouched” (p. xii).

[All images from the Sotheby’s catalogue] –  for the catalogue and complete sale results, see the Sotheby’s website.

[Posted by Deb]