Bibliofemme News
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21/12/2004
Rare Hawthorne manuscript up for auction
A rare early copy of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is set to be auctioned.
The book consists of corrected proofs with hundreds of annotated corrections in Hawthorne's hand-writing and was donated to the Natick Historical Society in Boston.
This version has been verified as the oldest existing copy of the book.
Chris Coover, a senior specialist in rare books at Christie's in New York said: "This is unique. No other proof pages of any of Hawthorne's novels or stories survive." His thoughts were echoed by Matthew Bruccoli, a Hawthorne expert and academic who curates American literature and rare books at the University of South Carolina. "To my knowledge it is the only set of proof pages of any of the classic 19th-century novels. Apart from what they tell us about Hawthorne, it's a key document about publishing at that time," he said. "I know of nothing else like it."
The Natick Historical Society hopes to raise € 187,000 from the sale of the book which lay undiscovered in a desk drawer for over one hundred years.
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