“Written by Himself, and now Published for the Information of the Curious in all Nations”, it was a second edition of 1779 – but it would seem that it is the only copy to appear at auction since 1909.
Navigations and nights
Other notable successes in Chicago included a three-volume, 1599, second (first enlarged) edition of Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation…, at $48,000 (£36,365).
One of the original monthly parts that made up an exceptionally rare complete set of Tales of a Thousand and One Nights; [or], The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments printed in London in 1838-41. Sold at $22,000 (£16,665) by Potter & Potter.
In a very different category, the Tales of a Thousand and One Nights; [or] The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments was a set of the original monthly parts of Edward William Lane’s English translation, printed in London for Charles Knight & Co in 1838-41.
Potter & Potter noted that it included the Part X supplement missing in the only other recorded parts set, that in New York’s Pierpont Morgan library. It made $22,000 (£16,665).
Sold at a notably higher than predicted $32,000 (£24,240) was a collection of materials relating to the Treaty of Ghent, which assured Americans that their independence was permanent and that Britain would no longer make claims to US territory. It incorporated a rare set of maps denoting the boundaries between US and British territories in the Great Lakes regions after the War of 1812.
Literary highlights included an early state example of the 1885, first US edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A copy billed as near pristine, it sold for $18,000 (£13,635).
A May, 1965 edition of Ebony magazine, inscribed for “My Friend / Claude Wyatt / With Warm Personal Regards / Martin Luther King Jr.” It took $11,000 (£8335) at Potter & Potter.
Items with ties to Martin Luther King included a May, 1965 edition of Ebony magazine inscribed to a friend, which realised $11,000 (£8335), and an inscribed first of King’s Strength to Love of 1963.
The latter, sold for $10,000 (£7575), was a collection of sermons delivered in the lead-up to the ‘Birmingham Campaign’ that were largely composed and edited during the two weeks he spent in an Alabama jail for holding a prayer vigil outside City Hall.
