Heritage’s upcoming Rare Book Auction on March 7, 2018 in New York is sure to be a page-turner. The sale comprises 600 lots, many from private collections, with several signed and first edition copies of important literary works. Two of the top tier items in the sale are a signed and inscribed first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and an inscribed presentation copy of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.

“‘Signed, first editions’ is the theme of this season’s auction,” James Gannon, Director of Rare Books at Heritage, said. “We have the great fortune to offer many of the 20th century’s greatest novels signed by their authors. Nearly all come from private collections not seen at auction in decades.”

Publisher and philanthropist James C. Seacrest compiled the largest collection in this auction. The estimated total for the collection is over $440,000 and all proceeds will be donated to charity, according to a family representative.

The Great Gatsby copy comes from the Seacrest Collection. It was inscribed by Fitzgerald in 1939 for Tatnall Brown, a banker and former Dean of Haverford College. “The inscription reads ‘For Tatnall Brown / from one, who / is flattered at / being remembered / F Scott Fitzgerald / Hollywood, 1939,’ which reflects Fitzgerald’s deep and well-documented concern about his legacy as a novelist,” Gannon said.

Additional signed modern editions from the Seacrest Collection includes On the Road by Jack Kerouac, a 1955 first edition of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Crusade in Europe by Dwight D. Eisenhower, and first edition association copy of Whither Bound? by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The Seacrest Collection also includes Charles Dickens volumes, which are a signed and dated first edition, second issue of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby and 1843 first edition of A Christmas Carol. Dickens’ work is also in the Collection of Daniel J. King, including a set of Christmas books with a third person autograph note by the author and an unsigned first edition, first issue of A Christmas Carol.

Other King Collection items are first edition examples of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, an asbestos-bound copy of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and two scarce Audubon Prints of The White-Headed Eagle and an Uncolored Gannet.

For the first time, Heritage is presenting a significant grouping of Continental, Irish and Latin American literature. Within this section are a signed holograph manuscript by Jorge Luis Borges, Voyage au bout de la nuit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, an inscribed presentation copy of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, inscribed copy of Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1 of just 150 first edition copies of Ulysses by James Joyce, and a 1969 first edition inscribed copy of Fin de Mundo by Chilean President Salvador Allende.