Printed & Manuscript Americana

The Printed & Manuscript Americana department specializes in unique and rare historical material on paper from the fifteenth century to the present, including all of North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean. Under the guidance of Director Rick Stattler, sales consist of books and manuscripts, as well as broadsides, pamphlets, ephemera, historical prints and photographs. Areas of focus include the American Revolution, the Civil War, early American imprints, the West, Mormonism, diaries, American Judaica and colonial Latin America. Single-owner sales have included Revolutionary Americana from the Allyn Kellogg Ford Collection and the Latin Americana Library of Dr. W. Michael Mathes.

The department sold a first edition of The Book of Mormon in 2007 for the record price of $180,000, and has frequently contributed to scholarship in the field with discoveries such as a previously unknown edition of The Bay Psalm Book, which sold for $221,000 in 2016. In 2017 the department sold an archive from the Pond family of Minnesota, recording their efforts as missionaries to convert Native Americans, for $112,500.