Rare and Remarkable Books & Manuscripts, from Descartes to Mao Zedong

Rare and Remarkable Books & Manuscripts, from Descartes to Mao Zedong

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  Carlo Goldoni, A series of ten autograph letters to the Genoese nobleman Cristoforo Spinola, Venice, 1742-1743
  Estimate £20,000-30,000

  Autograph letters by Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793) are virtually unobtainable on the market. This is the only series of letters by Goldoni ever to appear at auction. Before embarking on his literary career, Goldoni trained as a lawyer and spent time in Venice where he tried to defend a Genoese merchant against his creditors.

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  Mao Zedong, Calligraphic autograph letter signed, to the journalist Yang Yi
  17 August [c. 1948]
  Estimate £300,000-400,000

  This letter is an exceptional rarity. There is no record of any autograph letter signed by Mao having previously been sold on the international market. Addressed to a trusted friend, it displays Mao’s remarkable skill at calligraphy.
  
  Find out more about this lot.

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  A lock of Beethoven’s hair, given by him to the pianist Anton Halm in 1826
  Estimate £12,000-15,000

  This is arguably the best-documented lock of Beethoven’s hair to survive. The pianist Anton Halm told the story in the 1860s to Beethoven’s first great biographer A.W. Thayer, of how someone had sent him hairs that were supposedly Beethoven's (but in fact cut from a goat). When Beethoven learned that his good friend Halm had been tricked; he broke into a fury and promptly snipped off a substantial lock some hair from the back of his head and gave it to him, declaring it to be genuine.

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  Robert Schumann, autograph love poem written for Clara Wieck during their courtship, November 1838
  Estimate £15,000-20,000

  This poem is part of one of the classic real-life love stories of the romantic era. Robert and Clara Schumann are artists as closely linked in music as Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are in literature. Like them, the two lovers endured a long campaign by her family (specifically Clara’s father) to keep them apart, before triumphing over adversity and finally marrying.

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  Richard Strauss, Fine autograph manuscript signed of Strauss's orchestration of the song "Nun halt Frau Minne Liebeswacht", 1898
  Estimate £35,000-40,000

  This unpublished manuscript is the only known source for Strauss's characteristically fulsome orchestration. Strauss originally arranged Ritter's song for his concert with the German soprano Agnes Stavenhagen on 23 February 1891.

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  Vienna, a “time capsule” of art and music in 1924 containing autograph letters by musicians, artists and authors
  Estimate £40,000-60,000

  An important collection of autograph manuscript quotations and artistic tributes to David Bach by Bartók, Berg, Schoenberg, Strauss, Webern, Hoffmann, Kokoschka, Moll, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Zweig and others, Vienna, 13 August 1924, in a striking presentation case designed by the founding member of the Wiener Werkstätte, Josef Hoffmann himself.

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  Ovid, Opera, illuminated manuscript on vellum, [Venice, c. 1470-1475]
  Estimate £30,000-50,000

  The long-lost companion volume to the Rimini Ovid; written by 'The Badoer Scribe', a scribe close to Bartolomeo Sanvito, and illuminated by the Master of the Rimini Ovid.

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  Filippo Calandri, Aritmetica, Florence, 1491
  Estimate £24,000-30,000

  This first edition of the first illustrated Italian book on arithmetic contains woodcuts to demonstrate the problems. It also contains the first appearance in print of long division and of the word "zero".

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  René Descartes, Discours de la methode pour bien conduire sa raison, & chercher la verité dans les sciences, Leiden, 1637
  Estimate £50,000-70,000

  First edition of Descartes' theory of scientific philosophy, one of the most influential philosophical treatises of the modern age, which helped reduce the limitations of Aristotelianism and their negative effect on scientific progress. Descartes stated that knowledge must be based on the experience of the mind which led to the famous quote for which Descartes is best known, "je pense, donc je suis".

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  Frans Hogenberg, Etchings of scenes from the Dutch war of Independence, [Cologne, c. 1570-1600]
  Estimate £4,000-6,000

  A fine series of plates depicting the day-to-day events during the period, mostly covering the Dutch wars against the Spanish but also including events in England and France. These prints are important sources of contemporary news because of the continuous nature of their publication.

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