Colorful ‘Washington’ leads rare books auction Aug. 14

A first-edition of Washington by American novelist Lucy Foster Madison leads a collection of rare books in an online-only Jasper52 auction to be held Sunday, Aug. 14. The offering will range from the earliest printed material to modern children’s classics.

Each of the lots in this fully curated sale opens for bidding at $1, and across the board there’s no reserve (minimum required selling price).

Featured in the book Washington, published by Penn Publishing Co. in 1925, are eight full-page color plates by noted American illustration Frank E. Schoonover (1877-1972). This first edition comes in its original two-part box with the top portion containing a color illustration of George Washington by Schoonover. The book (above) is estimated at $150-$200.

Also lavishly illustrated with 20 full-page hand-colored steel engravings and dozens of woodcut vignettes is A Comic History of England by Gilbert Albott Beckett. This circa 1880 two-volume set (plate illustration below) is sumptuously bound in full finely polished crimson morocco (est. $150-$200).

Also estimated at $150-$250 is a first edition of Max Beerbohm’s The Happy Hypocrite (1915: Johnn Lane, London). The book (below) is elaborately illustrated with 11 full-page color plates by George Sheringham.

A three-volume set of The Vision; Or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise of Dante Alighieri, printed (and translated) in 1814, has a $900-$1,200 estimate.

A 1958 edition of the Dr. Seuss classic The Cat in the Hat Comes Back has already generated considerable absentee bidding. It is estimated at $125-$200.