A COPY of the 1916 Proclamation failed to sell at a Sotheby’s auction of rare books and manuscripts in New York earlier this month.
It had a pre-sale estimate of $180,000-$275,000 (€140,000-€212,000).
The catalogue description of the lot noted that it had previously sold through Hodges Figgis in Dublin in 1966 and had up to a dozen small tears at the folds causing damage to some of the lettering.
The auction record for a copy of the Proclamation is €360,000 paid at Adam’s/Mealy’s in Dublin in April this year. Another copy in pristine condition was sold at Adam’s in 2005 for €350,000.
At the same New York sale an 1898 first edition of The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde, one of 800 original copies, sold for a mid-estimate $22,500.
This was a presentation copy inscribed and signed by Wilde — “Maurice Eilbert. from his friend, the Author. Paris, ‘98”.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol was the first of only three works brought out by Wilde after his release from prison in 1897.
The manuscript of an 11-line lyric poem by W B Yeats titled Peace, first published in The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910), with an inscription by Ezra Pound, sold for $5,000 ($5,000-$7,000).