NEW YORK, NY.- Swann Galleries’ April 9 auction of Early Printed, Medical, Scientific & Travel Books saw strong results for illuminated manuscripts and early printed volumes. Tobias Abeloff, Swann’s early printed books specialist, said, “This was a successful sale. While early printed volumes performed quite well, we also saw lots in the scientific and medical sections of the sale far surpass expectations.”

A single leaf from a paper copy of the Gutenberg Bible brought $55,000*, while a 1463 manuscript of Petrus Lombardus's Sentences sold for $45,000.

Fit for a queen was a copy of Marcus Tullius Cicero’s Orationum volumen primum, 1543, which was bound for the private library of Queen Elizabeth I, and decorated with her falcon device. It brought $25,000 — more than two times its pre-sale estimate.

Also bringing five figures were Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, first edition, London, 1625, with His Pilgrimage, London, 1626, $32,500; Saint Aurelius Augustinus, Sermones ad heremitas, manuscript in Latin and Italian on vellum, Italy, early 1400s, $22,500; a Parisian Book of Hours with contemporary illumination, printed on vellum, 1534, $15,000 and Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, first edition, three volumes, London, 1830-33, $11,250.

Additional scientific and medical highlights included W.T.G. Morton, Remarks on the Proper Mode of Administering Sulphuric Ether by Inhalation, first edition, Boston, 1847, $9,375; Sir Isaac Newton, A Treatise on the System of the World, first edition in English, London, 1728, $6,750 and Aratus, Syntagma Arateorum, first Grotius edition, Leiden, 1600, $6,250.

Rounding out the sale were Jean-Jacques Boissard, Vitae et icons Sultanorum Turcicorum, first edition in Latin, Frankfurt am Main, 1596, from the travel books portion of the auction, $6,500; Ramon Llull, Liber de ascensu et descensu intellectus, first edition, Valencia, 1512, $8,125; Gratianus, Decretum, Strassburg, 1489, $7,000; Saint Bonaventura, Opuscula, two volumes, Strassburg, 1495, $6,500 and William Shakespeare, Othello, London, 1705, $6,000.