Cameron's Tennyson Illustrations, Rosa Parks Notes, Stowe Autograph: Auction Preview

Here are the sales I'll be keeping an eye on this week:

At Freeman's | Hindman in Chicago on Tuesday, March 18, The Collected Library, in 364 lots. A group of 162 Limited Editions Club publications from the collection of former Ford CEO Donald Petersen rates the top estimate at $3,000–5,000. A run of Paxton's Magazine of Botany (1834–1849) is estimated at $2,000–3,000, as is a printer's sample copy of the Lakeside Press edition of Moby Dick (1930) with illustrations by Rockwell Kent. This is being sold together with the first two volumes of the published limited edition, and a copy of the Random House trade edition of the same year.

On Thursday, March 20, Bonhams sells 229 lots of Fine Books and Manuscripts, including a presentation copy of Julia Margaret Cameron's Illustrations to Tennyson's Idylls of the King (1875) inscribed to actor Henry King. This shares the top estimate of £20,000–30,000 with Van Rheede's Hortus Indicus Malabaricus (1678–1693). The original Hablot K. "Phiz" Browne drawing for plate 37 in Dickens' Pickwick Papers, autographed by Charles Dickens, is expected to fetch £15,000–20,000; Humboldt and Bonpland's seven-volume botanical compendium from their expedition to South America and Mexico (1815–1825) is estimated at £10,000–20,000.

At Swann Galleries on Thursday, 403 lots of Printed & Manuscript African Americana. A leaf of Rosa Parks' autograph recollections of her first meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1955 rates the top estimate at $30,000–40,000. A copy of the photograph known as "The Scourged Back" (1863) with notes on the verso from a Massachusetts surgeon in Baton Rouge is estimated at $25,000–35,000. A 1958 edition of The Negro Travelers' Green Book could sell for $20,000–30,000.

Potter & Potter Auctions sell 629 lots of Vintage Posters on Thursday, with the maquette for Leonetto Cappiello's 1922 poster for the Grand Bazar de l'Hotel de Ville rating the top estimate at $15,000–25,000. David Klein's c.1960 New York / Fly TWA poster is estimated at $7,000–9,000.

At PBA Galleries on Thursday, Americana – Natural History – Travel – U.S. Presidents – Cartography, in 446 lots. The first two parts of George Edwards' Natural History of Birds (1802) is expected to lead the way at $12,000–18,000. A copy of the first edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin with a mounted Stowe autograph card dated 1891 on the front flyleaf is estimated at $8,000–12,000, as is a second edition copy of Newton's Principia (1713).