?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
LEROUX, GASTON. The Phantom of the Opera. Color frontispiece and four 2-page color illustrations by Andre Castaigne. 8vo, original pictorial brown cloth, front cover and spine stamped in white and blind, trace of rubbing to spine tips; original dust jacket, serrated chipping to spine panel foot with loss of imprint letters, flap folds rubbed, corners nicked, scattered creasing, chip to top of rear panel, short closed tears; ownership signature to front free endpaper, contents with just a few leaves with minor foxing, else contents quite clean. New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, (1911)
first american edition, first printing with the imprint "Press of Braunworth & Co. Bookbinders and Printers Brooklyn, N.Y." at the foot of the copyright page. This, the dust jacket design with the Phantom on the stairwell and not the bell tower; one of only three or four total copies of the book known to have retained its dust jacket. The present copy represents the first jacketed example bearing this design to appear at auction (two examples with bell tower design traced at auction, in these rooms). A cornerstone of the horror and mystery genres. unspohisticated copy and a true rarity in original dust jacket.
