Vermont man's rare books sell for nearly $4 million at auction

Brent Hallenbeck, Burlington Free Press
·2 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

Rare books owned by Burlington native and Shelburne resident Bruce Lisman sold for more than $3 million at auction last week.

The featured piece in the sale – corrected page proofs of “The Scarlet Letter” handwritten by the book’s author, Nathaniel Hawthorne – sold to philanthropist Stuart Rose for $693,000, according to Christie’s auction house in New York. Christie’s had estimated the 1850 book’s value before auction at $600,000-$800,000.

The entirety of Lisman’s 331-piece collection auctioned by Christie’s, however, fell short of the top estimate. The auction house valued Lisman’s collection at up to $4.5 million, but the sale of Lisman’s books instead generated $3,851,568.

The Bruce M. Lisman Collection of Important American Literature, up for auction through Christie's of New York, features works of 18th- and 19th-century American literature collected by Lisman, a Vermont native who lives in Shelburne.
The Bruce M. Lisman Collection of Important American Literature, up for auction through Christie's of New York, features works of 18th- and 19th-century American literature collected by Lisman, a Vermont native who lives in Shelburne.

Lisman, a retired Wall Street executive who in 2016 sought the Republican nomination for Vermont governor, began collecting rare books in New York in the late 1980s. Now in his mid-70s, Lisman told the Burlington Free Press last month that collecting books had been “a great love affair” but he knew it was time to move on.

“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.”

According to Christie’s, other books from Lisman’s collection that sold at auction include Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” from 1840, which made $441,000; an inscribed copy of Herman Melville’s “Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life” for $176,400; and the 1851 London edition of Melville’s “The Whale,” which brought in $170,000.

The annotated proof of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" is the centerpiece of The Bruce M. Lisman Collection of Important American Literature, which was auctioned by Christie's in New York.
The annotated proof of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" is the centerpiece of The Bruce M. Lisman Collection of Important American Literature, which was auctioned by Christie's in New York.

Lisman also sold at auction an autographed letter by Mark Twain to his future father-in-law from Dec. 29, 1868, in which the author defended his reputation, for $151,200; and a copy of “The Scarlet Letter” that Hawthorne presented to a friend, George Mullet, which earned $138,600.

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: 'Scarlet Letter' leads nearly $4 million book sale for Vermont man