Title: THE POLAR LIBRARY OF DR. JOHN M. LEVINSON
Date: May 24, 2007
Time: 1:30 PM
Exhibition: Saturday, May 19, 10-4
Monday, May 21, 10-6
Tuesday, May 22, 10-6
Wednesday, May 23, 10-6
Thursday, May 24, 10-noon
Contact Person: Jeremy Markowitz
jmarkowitz@swanngalleries.com

Dr. Levinson's superb collection attracted great interest from collectors.

The prize book, the “veal” copy of Shackleton's Aurora Australis, 1908, signed and inscribed to expedition member George Buckley, turned out to be even more desirable than expected: it was one of very few copies of the first issue, which contains a paragraph of text subsequently suppressed and replaced with an illustration. It realized $84,000.

Among the record-setting Antarctic books were John Marra's Journal of the Resolution's Voyage . . . On Discovery to the Southern Hemisphere, an account of Cook's Second Voyage, and the first crossing of the Antarctic Circle, London, 1775, $21,600; James Murray and George Marston, Antarctic Days, Sketches of the homely side of Polar life by two of Shackleton's men, first edition, deluxe issue, signed by Shackleton, Murray and Marston, London, 1913, $14,400; and William Lashly's Diary, first edition, one of only 75 copies, with the publisher's glassine dust wrapper still intact, and with an Autograph Letter Signed by Lashly bound in, Reading, 1938-39, $18,000.

Strong prices were also achieved for works related to Arctic exploration. Auction records were achieved for Robert Goodsir's An Arctic Voyage to Baffin's Bay and Lancaster Sound, in Search of Friends with Sir John Franklin, London, 1850, first edition, $13,200; Edward Belcher, The Last of the Arctic Voyages . . . in Search of Sir John Franklin, London, 1855, $9,000; and Alexander Armstrong, A Personal Narrative of the Discovery of the North-West Passage, first edition, 1857, $8,400.

Artifacts included a message buoy with a cork base and a 45-star metal American flag used on the 1901-02 Baldwin-Ziegler Expedition to the North Pole via Franz Josef Land, that was found in East Greenland, $8,400; and George M. Levick's surgeon's kit from the Terra Nova Expedition, London, circa 1900, $6,240.