A rare books auction definitely worth giving a damn about

This article was taken from Business Day on 29 August 2014.

A rare copy of the first edition of Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell was among books offered at the Antiquarian Books online auction at www.antiquarianauctions.com, which closed yesterday after the time of going to press.

Published in May 1936, the book is one of only 10,000 printed. It was chosen by Book of the Month Club as one of its selections for June 1936 and the book was officially issued in the same month. This is why the May 1936 copies are the rarest and most valued.

Warner Bros. were offered the film right to the book for $70,000. The studio refused, MGM snapped up the offer and the rest is history.

“Quite frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” is Gone with the Wind’s best quote, uttered by Rhett Buttler in reply to Scarlett O’Hara when she asked what would happen to her now that he was leaving her.

The estimate price of this first edition is $1,250-$1,350.

Of special interest at the online auction are Orders for Clearing Farms, issued during the Anglo-Boer War. Comprising two pages, it gives detail for the clearing of Boer families living on farms. The hand-written document is embossed with the official British coat of arms. The orders were issued in circa 1901 but no place or date are given.

The 14 orders instruct all families living on farms and all their stock to be moved to the most convenient railway station. All “natives” living on farms should be collected and sent to the railway. All standing crops are to be destroyed and all horses are to be removed from the farms, the orders instruct, adding that those fit for riding be handed over to the remount department.

The estimate for this item was $500-$600.

An unpublished manuscript - The Boer Side of the White Flag, Cruelty, etc - by Peter MacQueen of Boston in the US in 1900, is 25 pages written in ink on one side of the pages only. The estimate was $2,500-$3,000. MacQueen gives wide-ranging accounts, many of them firsthand, of Boer grievances and British atrocities, as well as a number of “white flag” events. Caffre War and Death of Hintza includes reports relating to the Sixth Frontier War or the Hintsa War of 1834-1835, described as the most violent of the frontier wars.

It includes extracts of dispatched received from, or addressed to, the Governor of the Cape of Good Hope relating to the war and death of Hintsa. The estimate was $1,500-$2,000.