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114 (PHOTOGRAPHY.) SMITH, Catherine A. N. Half plate tintype by a female photographer. 840 Broadway, New York: [c.1870s–90s] Original tintype photograph (178 × 125 mm). Printed typographic label and price list (79 × 40 mm) affixed to verso. Presented in a handmade dark brown stained solid oak frame with conservation mounting and UV acrylic glazing. Top left corner chipped, some minor scratches and lightly soiled from han- dling, else very good. A notably unusual tintype photograph, very informally composed, of three elegantly dressed women in hats and fur clothing by New York photographer “Mrs C. A. N. Smith”, who specialised in ladies’ portraits. Each woman gazes in a different direction; their position- ing, and the uneven framing of the image, is unorthodox; the photo- graph’s edges are somewhat unfocused and the background appears unprepared. All this suggests that the purpose of taking the pho- tograph was markedly different than that of a typical formal studio group portrait: rather, it was produced to commemorate a friendship or an outing, being “of the moment”, and thus a rare survival. As the promotional label on the rear of the tintype states, Smith (b. 1820) offered coloured crayon and oil portraits, card pictures and gems (“finished in ten minutes”), and “good pictures taken in cloudy weather”. Her studio is fleetingly mentioned in a collection of work by New Yorker journalist Joseph Mitchell, known for his portraits of people and places at the margins of the city: one of his characters recalls going to “Mrs C. A. N. Smith’s Tintype Gallery at Broadway and Thirteenth, which was famous in its day” (“McSor- ley’s Wonderful Saloon” in Up in the Old Hotel , 1943, p. 214). Though she herself remains a mysterious figure, with very little concrete information available on her or her practice, Smith’s work (where it survives) appears in a number of distinguished photographic collections. The Julia Driver collection of women in photography at Yale has two cartes de visite , one cabinet photograph, and a tintype by Smith. The NYPL has a collection of 153 tintypes circa 1850–90, with Smith identified as one of the contributing photographers. She is included in photography historian Peter E. Palmquist’s sur- vey, Women Photographers: A Selection of Images from the Women in Pho-
tography International Archive 1852–1997 (1997), and can also be traced to the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society, which charts the development of photographic technology. £550 [131611] 115 [PLATH, Sylvia; as] LUCAS, Victoria. The Bell Jar. London: William Heinemann, 1963 Octavo. Original black boards, titles to spine in gilt. With the dust jacket, de- signed by Thomas Simmonds. Housed in a black quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. A fine copy in the exceptionally sharp and fresh jacket, with just a short closed tear to head of spine panel, a little creasing and rubbing to extremities, otherwise very crisp. first edition, first impression, of the author’s only novel, and most uncommon in such nice condition. The Bell Jar , released on 14 January 1963, just five weeks before Plath died, was published pseu- donymously by Plath to avoid offending her mother, who appears in the novel thinly-disguised. It was not published under Plath’s name until 1967. Tabor A4. £10,000 [125685] 116 (PLATH, Sylvia.) THOMAS, Trevor. Sylvia Plath: Last Encounters. Bedford: privately published, 1989 Octavo, pp. 36. Original spiral-bound red wrappers, title illustration to front cover in black. Text printed on rectos only. Faint soiling to rear cover, a cou- ple of small marginal marks; else a near-fine copy. First and sole edition of this suppressed work, presentation copy to Elizabeth Sigmund, the dedicatee of The Bell Jar , inscribed by the author , “For Elizabeth, with all my good wishes, and to mark years of friendship. Love from Trevor, Christmas 1989”, and signed and numbered as 36 of 200 copies (most of which were destroyed after a court settlement with Ted Hughes); also inscribed by Sig- mund on the title page, with her ownership inscription dated 2007. Sigmund has annotated the work in 14 places, underlining sections
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