Austen firsts star in US

First editions of all of Jane Austen’s major works featured in a sale last month held by Swann Galleries (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

Extracted from Antiques Trade Gazette | Ian McKay

An 1813 first of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in a contemporary but not original binding that sold for $80,000 (£62,015) at Swann Galleries.

In the end all went to the same determined private buyer at prices notably higher than their estimates and for a total of $238,250 (£184,690).

In period, if not the now exceedingly rare original bindings, they were led at $80,000 (£62,015) by a 1813 copy of Pride and Prejudice, a sum only once bettered at auction.

In 2010 the ex-Hogan/Doheny copy in those drab but elusive original boards sold at Sotheby’s in London for £115,000 – then around $183,000.

The rarest of the works offered in New York was a copy of Sense and Sensibility of 1811 that was bid to $65,000 (£50,385) at the auction on February 20 and, in sterling terms at least, may claim a record.

It is thought that fewer than a thousand copies of the first edition were printed and the only copy to have made more in dollar terms was that from Jerome Kern’s library, which in 2001 sold for $70,000 (then £48,795) at Sotheby’s New York.

JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye – $28,000 (£21,705) at Swann.

The other work from the Swann sale illustrated here is a finely preserved copy in a first issue dust jacket of the 1951 first edition of JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. It sold at $28,000 (£21,705).