Between the Covers, Rare Finds Abound

Voyeurs, venturers and visiting professors may all find something of interest at the California International Antiquarian Fair, a showcase for more than 150 book dealers worldwide which runs through Sunday at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel.

Consider:

A watercolor by Maud Humphrey, mother of Humphrey Bogart and an important American illustrator at the turn of the century.

The lyrics, in George Harrison’s handwriting, of “I, Me, Mine” from the Beatles’ last album together.

A fine calf-bound copy of “Don Quixote,” printed in Spain in the 18th Century and valued at $25,000. It once belonged to American statesman John Jay, who was minister plenipotentiary to Spain.

A Revolutionary War handbill, possibly the first account of the crossing of George Washington and his troops at Trenton, N.J.

The event, open to the public, is sponsored by the Antiquarian Booksellers Assn. of America. Among the book treasures exhibited will be a rare Dickens manuscript, “The Haunted Man,” dated 1848 and offered at $475,000.

A rarity is a one-page document written by Abraham Lincoln, a debate with an imaginary antagonist on the evils of slavery.

There is a collection of 62 letters written by John Steinbeck to his two sons and their mother, a first edition of Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species” and a collection of handwritten Bob Dylan manuscripts, including one for “Blonde on Blonde.”

In the ‘30s and on location on Catalina Island, Howard Hughes and various movie stars, including Mae West, Carole Lombard, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and Bing Crosby, signed a celebrity book at the Catalina Country Club, to be offered at the fair.

There is a wedding document signed by Napoleon and Josephine as witnesses to a royal marriage. Maggs Brothers of London, 50 Berkeley Square, booksellers to the queen, is exhibiting here for the first time. And, from Hatchard’s Bookstore in London, once that city’s premier bookseller, there is the order book, being offered as “The Reading Habits of the Rich and the Famous in Mid-19th Century London.”

Fair hours are from noon to 6 p.m. today and Sunday and there is an admission charge of $5. Sunday is “discovery day,” when the hopeful and the curious may bring as many as three books from their attics or garages for appraisal.