Fine Books and Manuscripts, Including Selections from the Collection of Barbara and Ira Lipman

Fine Books and Manuscripts, Including Selections from the Collection of Barbara and Ira Lipman

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 121. Wallace, Lew | Wallace, Lew. First edition, first issue of Ben-Hur. An uncommonly nice copy.

The Passion of American Collectors: Property of Barbara and Ira Lipman

Wallace, Lew | Wallace, Lew. First edition, first issue of Ben-Hur. An uncommonly nice copy

Lot Closed

December 16, 09:02 PM GMT

Estimate

2,000 - 3,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

The Passion of American Collectors: Property of Barbara and Ira Lipman


Wallace, Lew 

Ben-Hur. A Tale of the Christ. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880


8vo (168 x 113 mm). 12pp. publisher's catalogue at rear; first gathering a bit loose. Original grey-blue cloth with colored floral designs, lettered in black; spine lightly sunned, corners a bit bumped, boards lightly discolored, still an uncommonly nice copy. Housed in a blue cloth slipcase with chemise. 


First edition, the rare first issue, (dated title-page and dedicated "To the Wife of My Youth"). 


"In America, 300,000 copies were sold in the first ten years after publication, making it one of the highest-ranking bestsellers of the nineteenth century. It has been successfully translated to the stage, and also into one of the early moving picture colossal super-spectacles" (Grolier). 


PROVENANCE

Thomas Jefferson McKee (bookplate) — Mrs J. Insley Blair (excised Blairhame booklabel – now lacking – on front paste-down, letter of provenance laid in from John Champion dated [19]32, where he describes this copy as "the finest by far that I have ever seen") 


REFERENCE

BAL 20798; Grolier 100-82