Steve GannUnpublished Twain Story Up For Auction
April 22nd 2010 01:38
The aucton is scheduled for June 17 at Sotheby's in New York.
"The story is certainly one of the gems of the Sotheby's sale," said Robert Hirst, general editor of the Mark Twain Papers & Projects at the University of California at Berkeley. "Any Mark Twain archive or collector would be willing to go hungry for two or three years just in order to be able to buy it."
Hirst called it a "very intimate family record, with all of the charm both of Clemens himself," his family, and household servants."
It is estimated to sell for $120,000 to $180,000.
The total collection, which could bring $750,000 to $1.2 million, belonged to the late media executive James S. Copley, whose library of other literary and historic manuscripts will also be sold June 17.
Hirst said the University of California, which controls the copyright on "A Family Sketch" and virtually everything else by Mark Twain that is still protected by copyright, will be bidding at the auction, but he declined to say on what.
The university is editing and publishing Twain's uncensored autobiography in its entirety and exactly as he left it.
The first of three volumes will be released by the UC Press in November, on the 175th anniversary of his birth.
The last time a large collection of Twain material was offered at auction was in 2003, also at Sotheby's. That collection, which contained more memorabilia and souvenirs, sold for $1.4 million.
The upcoming sale is focused primarily on manuscript material that shows Twain "as a father and devoted husband and how important his family was to him throughout his entire lifetime," said Elizabeth Muller, Sotheby's vice president of books and manuscripts.
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