1 for the books: Vermont collector auctioning millions of dollars in rare literature
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As a child growing up in the Old North End of Burlington, Bruce Lisman had his imagination fired by the greats of 19th-century American literature. His father, Irving, a high-school teacher in South Burlington, read the adventuresome works of James Fenimore Cooper and Mark Twain to his two sons, “trying to inject something in our brains,” according to Bruce Lisman.
The injection worked, in ways that Irving Lisman perhaps never imagined. Bruce Lisman, who lives in Shelburne, went on to become a Wall Street executive, affording him the ability to not just read the great early works of American literature but to amass them. (When he sought the Republican nomination for Vermont governor in 2016, his net worth was revealed to be over $50 million.)
His collection grew into the hundreds, and includes numerous first and early editions of works by Washington Irving, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allen Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville and more. The centerpiece of Lisman’s collection is the handwritten corrected page proofs by Nathaniel Hawthorne for his 1850 mastework, “The Scarlet Letter.”
“I read a lot,” Lisman said, referring to his collection, “I think of them a lot and I always keep them nearby.”
Not for much longer, however. Christie’s in New York is auctioning The Bruce M. Lisman Collection of Important American Literature. The sale that concludes June 16 features 331 pieces valued at approximately $4.5 million, according to Christina Geiger, who heads the department of books and manuscripts at Christie’s in New York. The annotated copy of “The Scarlet Letter” alone is estimated by Christie’s to be worth $600,000-$800,000.
Geiger has handled auctions of rare books for 23 years. “In terms of American literature,” she said of Lisman’s books, “it’s the best collection I’ve seen in my career.”
Collecting Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville
Lisman lived in New York with his wife and two young daughters in the late 1980s. He was painting a bedroom in their home, needed a break and saw an ad for the Trinity Book Fair in Manhattan.
He showed up with a large glob of white paint on his head, wandered around the book fair and instantly loved it. He said he started “with more enthusiasm than brains” to buy a few works by Cooper.
Two years later, in 1990, Lisman attended a sale at Sotheby’s of works collected by H. Bradley Martin. “It was a fantastic panoply of books,” according to Lisman, who has 17 books from that sale, including significant works by Hawthorne and Melville.
“I always regretted not buying more,” Lisman said.
That was the largest public auction of works of American literature since 1924, when Stephen H. Wakeman sold his collection. Lisman called Wakeman’s sale a “watershed,” and he’d love his own sale of books to be the next generational benchmark for collections of American literature.
“I hope like the Bradley Martin sale it will be a touchpoint,” Lisman said.
Geiger said Lisman’s collection has a touch of Vermont history in it. His first American edition of Cooper’s 1840 novel “The Pathfinder” was owned by James P. Taylor, who founded the Green Mountain Club. Taylor apparently took the title of “The Pathfinder” literally; he instituted the Long Trail walking path that stretches the length of Vermont.
‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ ‘Leaves of Grass’
Lisman approached Christie’s last year about selling his collection. Geiger visited the location in New York state where Lisman’s collection resides.
“He had worked a lot through various book dealers in collecting so he was not known to us,” Geiger said of Lisman. “It was quite a revelation the first time we visited last December to see the collection. It was a surprise, something new and exciting.”
She was struck not just by the depth of the collection but by their great condition. She called his selection of works by “The Scarlet Letter” author “the best Nathaniel Hawthorne collection in private hands,” better even than those in libraries. The annotated version of “The Scarlet Letter” is especially important, Geiger said, as Hawthorne’s notations correcting the proof of his groundbreaking novel cover about 140 pages.
“It’s as close as you can get to Hawthorne’s process of creating this book, because he burned the manuscript,” Geiger said.
Lisman said other prized acquisitions include pristine early editions of Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” Lisman said Whitman gave a copy of “Leaves of Grass” to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote an exuberant letter about it that Whitman converted into a rare promotional broadside heralding the arrival of his seminal poetry collection.
“You can’t find a great ‘Leaves of Grass’ or that broadside,” Lisman said, “but I have them both.”
‘A great love affair’
Lisman, in his mid-70s, said collecting books has been fun and addicting.
“It’s been a great love affair,” he said. “Collections can be a fabulous love affair even if it’s a bunch of old wallets you collect, or baseball cards.”
He accomplished what he wanted. He created a good plan of collecting significant works showing the development of American literature as the country itself was developing in the mid-19th century. He completed that plan and was left with little if anything to add to the collection.
“It reaches a moment where you say, ‘I think I’m done with it,’” Lisman said. “It just felt like a good time to stop.”
He’s conflicted about parting with books he spent more than 30 years collecting.
“I guess I have mixed emotions depending on what time of the day you ask me,” Lisman said. He’s looking forward to seeing where the collection goes and what the reaction is, and said he hopes the sale “is a reference point for other collectors,” much as the Wakeman sale inspired Martin and the Martin sale inspired Lisman.
He also hopes, at a time when people are listening to audiobooks and reading books on electronic tablets, that books on paper continue to hold an allure for readers and collectors.
“These are physical things you can look at and see their age and how they age and what they meant to others who write inscriptions in them,” Lisman said.
Geiger said she hopes those who collect books know the objects are not just meant to sit on shelves.
“We do encourage people to read their books, actually,” Geiger said. “If your hands are clean and dry and you’re turning the pages carefully, there’s no reason not to enjoy them as the objects they were intended to be.”
For more information
The auction of the Bruce M. Lisman Collection of Important American Literature will take place in stages. The live sale of part one of the collection – the more-valuable part of the auction, according to Christina Geiger of Christie’s − takes place at 10 a.m. June 15. An online sale of part two of the collection takes place June 2-16. The works will be on view at Christie’s at Rockefeller Center in New York from June 10-15.
Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.
This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Vermont collector auctioning rare 19th-century books worth millions
