First Edition of Frankenstein Fetches a 'Hair-Raising Sum'

The only privately-owned first edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein became the pièce de resistance of a rare book auction over the weekend, selling for a "hair-raising sum" of $843,750, nearly triple the estimate, per UPI. Just three first editions of the horror novel are known to exist. Two are kept at the New York Public Library. The third was held in the private library of William Strutz, a book collector and attorney from Bismarck, North Dakota. Following his death in January, Heritage Auctions offered more than 225 books, letters, and manuscripts from his collection. The 1818 first edition of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus was a highlight among what Heritage Auctions said were "some of the greatest works of English and American literature from the 16th to 20th centuries."

A first printing of the first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, inscribed by the author in February 1927, sold for $425,000, making it the most expensive copy of the book ever sold. "Before this auction, no other copy of The Great Gatsby had topped the $400,000 mark," per Fine Books. A copy of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, inscribed to a friend of Tolkien's wife in September 1937, sold for $300,000, "the highest price ever paid for the book in auction history," per Cllct.com. And a first edition of Henry David Thoreau's Walden; or Life in the Woods, this one inscribed to the author's literary executor and hiking companion Harrison Gray Otis Blake, "set an auction record at $275,000," per Fine Books. It was one of just 1,500 books initially printed.

All in all, the auction realized $5,655,439, per Antiques and the Arts. "The results are a true testament to a great collector and a market that recognized the treasures assembled by William Strutz," said Francis Wahlgren, Heritage Auctions' international director of rare books and manuscripts. A self-described "reader," Strutz started collecting books in the 1950s and particularly sought out presentation copies of books, typically given to friends or family members of the author. He acquired the first-edition copy of Frankenstein, which was published anonymously, in 1975, per Cllct.com. Made up of three pink-boarded volumes, the collection was "watermarked '1816' and housed together in a full Morocco slipcase," per Antiques and the Arts. The asking price was $300,000. (More auction stories.)