Christie’s Will Sell a Rare Annotated Alcoholics Anonymous Manuscript in New York
A working copy of Alcoholics Anonymous, marked up by Bill Wilson and early AA member Hank Parkhurst, will come to Christie’s New York on July 1 with an estimate of $1 million to $2 million. The 167-page typescript, drawn from the collection of the late billionaire Jim Irsay, is one of the most closely tied surviving objects to the origins of the 12-step program — and one of the few that shows the book taking shape on the page.
The manuscript includes three pages written in pencil, along with revisions and annotations in green and red pencil and ink. A presentation leaf from Lois Wilson, Bill Wilson’s widow, is also bound into the volume. Christie’s said the sale proceeds are designated for philanthropic causes important to Irsay, whose collecting ranged from music memorabilia to foundational American documents.
The book’s cultural reach helps explain why it has become such a sought-after artifact. The Library of Congress has named Alcoholics Anonymous one of the 88 “Books That Shaped America.” More than 30 million copies have been sold, and the text has been translated into 43 languages. In 2021, AA’s General Services Office estimated that 12,455 AA groups were operating worldwide, with nearly two million members.
For historians, the manuscript captures a moment before the program was fully codified. AA historian Bill Schaberg has noted that before the book was published, there was no clear formulation of the recovery program and no plainly articulated Twelve Steps for drinkers to follow. Wilson’s own path to sobriety, shaped by a 1934 collapse in health, career, and reputation, led him to a spiritual framework for recovery. His 1935 meeting with Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio, helped turn that insight into a model of one alcoholic helping another.
The manuscript has also had a notable auction history. Irsay acquired it in 2018 for $2.4 million from Profiles in History. It previously sold at Sotheby’s for $1.6 million in 2004 and $992,000 in 2007. For bidders priced out of the top lot, Christie’s is also offering a signed first edition, first printing estimated at $15,000 to $25,000.
The July 1 sale will also include an 1823 copy of the Declaration of Independence, estimated at up to $3 million, and a signed George Washington letter that accompanied a copy of the US Constitution sent to Thomas Jefferson, with a high estimate of $2.5 million. Together, the lots place recovery history, American political memory, and private collecting in the same room.
