{"id":204074,"date":"2026-04-21T00:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T00:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/204074\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T00:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T00:28:09","slug":"trove-of-rare-books-stolen-from-whitney-estate-recovered-decades-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/204074\/","title":{"rendered":"Trove of rare books stolen from Whitney Estate recovered decades later"},"content":{"rendered":"

A trove of rare books and letters by literary legends like\u00a0James Joyce, John Keats and Oscar Wilde \u2014 worth more than $3 million and\u00a0stolen decades ago from the Whitney Estate in\u00a0Manhasset \u2014 are back in the hands of their rightful owners.<\/p>\n

The Whitney family declined to comment after the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office on Monday\u00a0announced it had recovered the 17 books, which had resurfaced\u00a0last year at two rare book sellers in\u00a0Manhattan.<\/p>\n

One of the books contains eight rare letters from English poet John Keats to his betrothed lover and fellow poet Fanny Brawne.<\/p>\n

B & B Rare Books\u00a0co-owner\u00a0Sunday Steinkirchner told Newsday a\u00a0man brought the books to the Madison Avenue shop in January 2025.<\/p>\n

When Steinkirchner saw a\u00a0leather-bound tome with gold lettering and vellum pages, she recognized\u00a0Keats’ handwriting.\u00a0She said the book contained eight of 30 letters written by Keats to Brawne\u00a0\u2014 valued at more than $2 million and out of public view\u00a0for more than a century.<\/p>\n

“A man came into the book store and said these books were from his family and wanted to sell them. I saw the letters, which I knew were authentic and I knew it wasn\u2019t his.” Steinkirchner said. “This is the coolest thing that has been in my shop. I can\u2019t think of anything more iconic and rare than letters and now had the chance to return them to their owners.”<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said at least 28 books were stolen from the Whitney Estate of John Hay <\/a>and Betsey Whitney between 1982 and 1989.<\/p>\n

“Manhattan is the cultural capital of the world, home to museums, galleries, and dealers displaying incredible artworks and antiquities,” Bragg said in a statement<\/a>. “Yet the integrity of this marketplace is undermined when stolen items are on display. We will not allow our borough to be a center for trafficked art and antiquities, and I thank our team of prosecutors and investigators for their work on this case.”<\/p>\n

John Whitney\u00a0founded the New York Herald Tribune and was president of the Museum of Modern Art. The family reported the books missing from the Whitney Estate to the Nassau County police\u00a0in 1989. The estate is now home to the nonprofit\u00a0Greentree Foundation<\/a>, which declined to comment Monday.<\/p>\n

No charges have been filed in the case, prosecutors said. The identity of the man who attempted to sell the books to B & B Rare Books and another book shop was not released. He has not been charged but the invesitgation is continuing, according to prosecutors. The district attorney\u2019s antiquities unit is still searching for the remaining missing books.<\/p>\n

Steinkirchner said she was able to trick the man into leaving the books after she told him they needed to be\u00a0authenticated before being sold on\u00a0consignment. In the meantime, she contacted authorities and a Princeton University professor to review the Keats letters.<\/p>\n

The letters, which include a drawing of Keats and a silhouette of\u00a0Brawne amid the scripts,\u00a0can be traced to 1885 when they were sold at auction by Brawne\u2019s family, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

“They suddenly just reappeared and no one has seen them,” said Princeton English Professor Susan J. Wolfson, who helped authenticate the books. “No one had seen these letters since 1888, except maybe the Whitney family.”<\/p>\n

\"John<\/p>\n

\n\tJohn Asbury is a breaking news and general assignment reporter. He has been with Newsday since 2014 and previously worked at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A trove of rare books and letters by literary legends like\u00a0James Joyce, John Keats and Oscar Wilde \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[2878,303,5368,8015,9,24,63,261,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-204074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-crime","10":"tag-local-crime","11":"tag-nassau","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-nyc-crime","16":"tag-queens","17":"tag-queens-headlines","18":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}