Christie's presents the private collection of William S. “Bill” Reese. Bill Reese was renowned as the foremost antiquarian book dealer-scholar of his generation, and his private collection will be among the most valuable sales in the American press in more than 50 years.
A series of themed live and online auctions will be held in New York beginning May 25 and September 2022, and highlights of the collection will be unveiled to the public during the Christie's Americana Week exhibition January 13-28. The Christie's exhibitions mark the first time in more than 30 years that any part of the current collection has been on public display. With approximately 700 lots, the collection has a total pre-sale auction estimate of $12 to $18 million.
The collection is highlighted by one of only six registered copies of one of the contemporary first editions of the Declaration of Independence, and probably the first edition printed in New England: the Sang-Copley-Reese copy (estimate: $1.000.000-1.500.000) . The Continental Congress, after authorizing the drafting of the Declaration and approving the text presented by Thomas Jefferson and his committee, worked to ensure the rapid dissemination of the historic document when it was approved on July 4, 1776. The rapid dissemination of the Declaration can be traced vividly in the newspapers and bordered editions from his birthplace in Philadelphia to the thirteen self-proclaimed states, how quickly express runners and mail could transport him. The text of the present copy corresponds almost exactly to the composition used for the printed edition in the issue of American Gazette July 16, 1776 published by John Rogers of Salem in collaboration with Ezekiel Russel. Only six copies, including the current edition, are extant, and four are held in institutional holdings including Georgetown University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Peabody Essex Museum.
Picture and color illustrated books are also richly represented. Highlights include John Woodhouse Audubon's illustrated notes of an expedition through Mexico and California from 1852; Henry James Warre's Sketches in North America and the Oregon Territory; Hudson River Portfolio of William Guy's Wall (the first complete copy of the first issue to be auctioned since 1948); Hannah Millard's even rarer chromolithograph work on California wine grapes, most of which appear to have been destroyed in the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906; and natural history works by John James Audubon, Mark Catesby, George Brookshaw, John Fisk Allen, and Daniel Giraud Eliot, among others.
Rare historical documents include Paul Revere's engraving of The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated In King Street, Boston, On March 5th 1770, By Party Of The 29th Reg. Boston dated March 1770 (estimate: $250.000-350.000) and a special copy of the first edition of Meriwether Lewis' History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1814, which is the definitive account of the most important exploration of the North American continent.
This copy is in a beautiful contemporary Boston binding, attributed to John Roulstone (estimate: $100.000-150.000). Daniel Bowen's A Front View of Yale-College and The College Chapel, New-Haven, 1786 represents Reese's significant connection to his alma mater and is the first published view of Yale (estimate: $70.000-100.000). Colonial and European-American are also particularly well represented, including superlative copies of works by John Smith, Theodor de Bry, Joshua Scottow, Nathaniel Morton, Louis Hennepin, among many others.
WILLIAM S. REESE (1955-2018) Few people have contributed so much to the American rare book field as scholar, bookseller, and collector William Sherman Reese. The founder of the William Reese Company of the same name in New Haven, Connecticut, "Bill" Reese was a seminal figure in American antiques, a man whose expertise and intellect left an indelible impact on both his craft and major collections. of the nation's rare books. Born in 1955, William S. Reese was the son of William Blaine Reese, a Coca-Cola dealer, and Katherine Jackson Reese, whose family owned the New Haven Register newspaper. Raised on a family farm, young Bill Reese was a keenly intellectual and intensely curious boy whose parents encouraged his passion for learning. Reese's father was an aficionado of birds and John James Audubon's ornithological paintings. Together, they traveled to Baltimore and Philadelphia to purchase Audubon prints, a harbinger of Bill Reese's later experience in the matter. In 1973, Reese entered Yale University, where he began his remarkable career in rare and American books.
In 1979, William S. Reese founded the antiquarian book company that would define his market presence: the William Reese Company, conveniently located adjacent to the Yale University campus and its Beinecke Library. Reese's interests and expertise came to encompass such fields as natural history, government and politics, travel, exploration, literature, and color books that reflected the rich historical diversity of the American experience. A longtime member of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America, the International League of Antiquarian Bookseller, the Grolier Club, the Club of Odd Volumes and the Old Book Table, Walpole Society, Reese has lectured frequently on his areas of expertise at other dealers, collectors, and American history buffs. He was a particularly fervent supporter of the American Antiquarian Society, of which he became a member at the age of twenty-five, as well as of his beloved Beinecke Library at Yale. In 1998, Reese won widespread acclaim for his establishment of the Reese Fellowship in the Print Culture of the Americas, which has since awarded research grants to more than 150 scholars, including high school students and teachers.
