- By Eric C. Lindstrom
- Business & Technology
Print 
Ithaca, NY -- National Book Auctions, located in Ithaca, NY hosted a Sunday, August 14th auction featuring a wide assortment of collectible books and ephemera highlighted by notable authors and artists such as William Shakespeare, Frank W. Bensen and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
The 430-lot auction also featured a unique assortment of Chinese and Thai pottery and pillow books.
The 8-volume set of Samuel Johnson’s edition of the “Plays Of William Shakespeare” (1765) fetched a hammer price of $2,040 (including buyer’s premium). Bound in decorative full leather featuring gilt tooling and raised spine bands, this antique set is a handsome collection of Shakespeare’s plays including the notes of Samuel Johnson and various other commentators.
Johnson announced his intention to edit Shakespeare's plays in his "Miscellaneous Observations on Macbeth" (1745), and a full proposal for the edition was published in 1756. The edition was finally first published in 1765.
Realizing a $1,740.00 hammer price (including buyer’s premium) was a five-volume set of Adam E. M. Paff’s “Etchings and Drypoints Of Frank W. Benson” (1917-59) with original, hand-signed etchings.
An 1893 Limited Edition of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Maud, a Monodrama” fetched a hammer price of $920.00 (including buyer’s premium) and an author-signed copy of William Faulkner’s “A Fable” (1954) fetched $840 (including buyer’s premium) at the gallery’s mid-season auction.
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