Major Sales
Among the many rare, important and exciting autographs we have handled in 40 years of business:
- Franz Schubert autograph manuscript of eight songs
- Beethoven’s autograph sketches with drafts for the Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, opus 73, known as the Emperor Concerto and an ALS asking a favor for a lady and discussing his Sonata in F. Major, Opus 17
- A questionnaire in Voltaire’s hand with Frederick the Great’s autograph replies
- A collection of 300 artists letters, many illustrated, including Monet, Gauguin, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Renoir, and Degas
- Albert Einstein manuscripts including his formulas for the Special Theory of Relativity (E=mc2) and the General Theory of Relativity as well as hundreds of pages of scientific manuscript
- Autographs written by every president of the United States including autograph letters of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy
- Napoleon proclaiming his coronation as Emperor of France
- Martin Luther King, Jr. letter referring to his “I Have a Dream” speech
- One of only six known letters written by Sigmund Freud to his mother as well as his last will and testament complete with a Freudian slip (He wrote “guilt edged” instead of “gilt edged!”)
- A highly important archive of Alfred Dreyfus material relating to his arrest and trial
- Antoine Saint-Exupery’s heavily annotated typescript of his masterpiece, Le Petit Prince
- An unpublished love letter from Felix Mendelssohn to his new bride, one of only two extant letters from Felix to Cécile and the only one in private hands
- A letter signed by Queen Elizabeth I in 1583 about “Important affairs which pertain to the defense and propagation of true religion”

- A complete autograph musical manuscript of Hoagy Carmichael’s masterpiece Stardust
- A menu from the last luncheon served aboard the Titanic and other ephemera from the Titanic
- Several marriage contracts signed by Napoleon and Josephine and a historic Napoleon letter about his return to France from Elba
- An autograph letter signed by Jane Austen to her biographer about her “eccentric tastes” in “Heroes & Heroines”
- A diminutive Lewis Carroll letter measuring just 2 by 3 inches and conveying Christmas greetings to a little friend
- A Wilkie Collins letter about The Moonstone, the first English-language “locked room” detective novel
- Signed photographs of Stephen Crane, Buffalo Bill Cody, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, Robert Goddard, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Johannes Brahms, Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Giuseppe Verdi, Ernest Hemingway, and Robert Frost
- George Washington’s hand drawn survey map of the western edge of his property near Mount Vernon, as well as a fragment from his handwritten draft of his first inaugural address, and an unpublished letter written on Christmas Day 1785 to “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, thanking him for his gift of trees

- A rare Oliver Cromwell ALS written shortly after Charles I’s beheading
- A document signed by Ben Franklin granting land to an American Revolution veteran
- An Ernest Hemingway letter about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein
- Thomas Jefferson’s last letter to Thomas Paine
- A document protesting the destruction of Diego Rivera’s mural at Rockefeller Center, signed by him, Frida Kahlo and 80 other artists
- A letter written by John F. Kennedy about “The historic space flight of our first astronaut, Commander Alan B. Shepard, Jr. …a truly significant event in America’s history”
- An 1860 autograph letter signed by Abraham Lincoln to the head of the Pennsylvania Republican Committee
- A letter describing the autopsy of Lincoln’s brain by the attending surgeon
- Holograph additions for Arthur Schopenhauer’s most famous work, The World as Will and Representation
- An autograph musical quotation from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4
- Harvey Milk’s last two passports
- An autograph letter signed by Oscar Wilde mentioning his masterpiece The Picture of Dorian Gray
- An extremely rare announcement of the formation of the Rothschild Bank signed by Mayer A. Rothschild and his sons
- Important musical manuscripts of George Gershwin
- A four-page handwritten letter by Jacqueline Kennedy about the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy