BARGAINS IN RARE MSS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19024, 26 May 1936, Page 3

BARGAINS IN RARE MSS

SHELLEY DIARY FOE £4O STEVENSON RELIC'S NEW YORK. April 15. Just under ,£6CCO .was realised at the sale by auction here ot nearly 10C0 letters, manuscripts and books, including manv first, editions, owned 'by the late Mr. ‘ Harry B. Smith, who wrote the librettos for 200 comic operas and musical comedies. Brices generally were unexpectedly low. The highest was J32SO for a ropy ot '“The Cricket, on. the .Hearth, ’ 1846. presented l.v Charles Dickens lo' ■ 1 lans Andersen. Mr. Gabriel Wells, the New 3 ork dealer, paid t!32 for a. three-page letter from Shelley to Leigh Hunt. £4O for the manuscript of Shelley s "l laire s .loni,ml.” and £32 from Byron’s autograph preface to ‘‘Hours of Idleness.” his first, published book. A large copy of the fourth folio Shakespeare, with some leaves uncut, went for £lls. Ollier prices were: £3B for an autograph letter from Dickens to Georgina Hogarth. £270 for the manuscript of ten chap ; lets of Stevenson’s "In the South Sens £6O for a collection of letters by Shelley regarding his expulsion from Oxford and his debts. . . , ~, , £QO for a report of the Garrick Lino Committee in 1853 concerning the expulsion of Edmund Yates for libelling Thackeray.