NEW YORK, Oct. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 19, 2008, noted Philadelphia businessman Jay T. Snider will auction his famed multi-million dollar collection relating to the City of Brotherly Love. To celebrate Mr. Snider's induction into the Chairman's Circle of the National Constitution Center, highlights of the collection will be previewed in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center on November 12 at a private event sponsored by Bloomsbury Auctions.

The exhibition includes a fine array of important books, manuscripts, broadsides, maps and prints all relating to Philadelphia from its 1681 founding through the 1876 Centennial celebration. Mr. Snider's comprehensive collection, believed to be the largest in private ownership, was formed to chronicle the history and growth of the birthplace of freedom. The Jay T. Snider Collection, featuring the History of Philadelphia and Important Americana, is expected to realize in excess of $3,000,000.

Highlights from the early colonial material in the collection include rare promotional tracts by William Penn and Gabriel Thomas, a 17th century Philadelphia record of land purchases along the Welsh Tract, as well as important documents and letters by Penn, Jonathan Dickinson, James Logan, and Isaac Norris. Early cartographic material includes the first maps to name both Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, as well as a lovely hand-colored copy of Thomas Holme's A Mapp of ye Improved Part of Pensilvania.

The sale is particularly rich on the history of colonial printing within the Middle Colonies, with particular emphasis on that region's most famous printers: William Bradford and Benjamin Franklin. The sale includes what very well may be the earliest obtainable William Bradford Philadelphia imprint, the earliest documented book sold and probably bound by Bradford and Bradford's very first book printed in New York. No sale about Philadelphia could possibly be complete without a significant selection of Benjamin Franklin material. Besides the usual array of imprints, including a lovely copy of Cato Major and several in their original wrappers, the Snider collection includes what is easily the most significant Franklin item to appear at auction in decades: a recently-discovered bound volume containing 264 forms each printed by Franklin in his first year of business. Also in the sale are lovely copies of four Indian treaties printed by Franklin, each from the famed collection of Frank Siebert.

The Revolutionary and Federal periods are highlighted by the first pamphlet printing of the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms--the precursor to the Declaration of Independence, a very rare Philadelphia newspaper broadside extra announcing the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, the official Continental Congress broadside calling for the cessation of arms at the end of the war and a lovely copy of the famed Aitken Bible. The sale also includes a highly-important autograph letter signed by founding father James Madison, discussing in detail the relationship between the Constitution and the Common Law.

Pictorial material in the auction, much from the famed collection of Martin Snyder, includes the first American color-plate book of the city, a fine copy of William Birch's The City of Philadelphia, a noted rarity and the best depiction of Philadelphia as the capital of the infant United States, as well as important separately-issued views of Philadelphia by Birch, George Beck, William

Strickland, John Lewis Krimmel, Thomas Doughty, William Breton, John Rubens Smith, Augustus Kollner, Currier & Ives and others. Also in the sale are two albums containing salted paper photographs of buildings in Philadelphia; these images from the 1850s constitute some of the earliest paper photographs produced in Philadelphia.

"Bloomsbury Auctions is honored to have been selected by Mr. Snider to auction his impressive collection" Jeremy Markowitz, Head of Americana at Bloomsbury remarked. "This is not, however, just a story of one city. The centrality of Philadelphia to all of American history, particularly to the nation's development in the colonial and federal periods, extends farther than any other U.S. city. Understanding the growth of Philadelphia is integral to an understanding of the evolution of the entire nation."

Public exhibition at Bloomsbury's New York gallery opens on Saturday November 15th, continues Monday November 17th, Tuesday November 18th from 10am until 5pm, and on Wednesday, November 19th from 9am to 11am. The auction will begin promptly at 1pm on Wednesday, November 19th.

Bloomsbury Auctions is the world's leading auction house for rare books and works on paper and is headquartered in London with salerooms in New York and Rome.

The National Constitution Center, located at 525 Arch St. on Philadelphia's Independence Mall, is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing public understanding of the U.S. Constitution and the ideas and values it represents. The Center serves as a museum, an education center, and a forum for debate on constitutional issues. For more information, call 215.409.6700 or visit www.constitutioncenter.org.

SOURCE Bloomsbury Auctions