Sometime between 1982 and 1989, the Long Island estate of New York publisher and American venture capitalist tycoon John Hay Whitney was ransacked. An extraordinary collection of 28 rare books and a bound collection of love letters by British poet John Keats were stolen.
 

January 2025, a young man whose identity shall remain suppressed, tried to sell the books he had inherited from his grandfather to two rare book dealers in Manhattan. Those dealers —— B&B Rare Books and Adam Weinberger Rare Books —— recognised the titles from the Art Loss Register and contacted the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which secured a search warrant to seize them.

 

“The individual who we seized the books from wasn’t even born at the time of the thefts, so he didn’t do it,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos said.

 

April 20, 2026, District Attorney Alvin Bragg, prosecutors in his Antiquities Trafficking Unit and a grandson of John Whitney announced the 17 books would be returned to the family, which intends to auction them off and donate the proceeds.

 

 

Other items returned include letters written by Oscar Wilde, a signed edition of “Finnegan’s Wake” by James Joyce, and “Household Stories of Grimm” by The Brothers Grimm that features 12 original drawings by Walter Crane.

 

 

According to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, the most valuable pieces in the collection are found inside of a bound collection of 37 love letters written by the British Romantic poet John Keats: Eight handwritten letters by Keats to his fiancee, Fanny Brawne, including the first letter he wrote to her. 20 years after Fanny Browne’s death in 1865, Brawne’s children sold those bequeathed letters at auction at Sotheby’s in 1885, which inspired Oscar Wilde to pen the sonnet “On the Sale By Auction of Keats’ Love Letters” in 1886. On their own, those letters are currently valued at more than $2,000,000.
 

On the Sale By Auction of Keats’ Love Letters 

 

These are the letters which Endymion wrote
To one he loved in secret, and apart.
And now the brawlers of the auction mart
Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note,
Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote
The merchant’s price. I think they love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart
That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat.

 

Is it not said that many years ago,
In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran
With torches through the midnight, and began
To wrangel for mean raiment, and to throw
Dice for the garments of a wretched man,
Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe?

 

~ Oscar Wilde

 

 

11 books remain unaccounted for.

The man who tried to sell the books has not been accused of wrongdoing.

The grandfather passed away in 2009.

He totally did it. . .I can’t be the only one thinking that?

 

Read more here: https://manhattanda.org/d-a-bragg-announces-return-of-17-rare-books-to-the-family-of-john-hay-whitney/ | https://nypost.com/2026/04/20/us-news/rare-books-swiped-from-nyc-royalty-found-after-40-years/
 

Or watch this movie trailer about an unscrupulous book dealer who would have absolutely bought and sold those books if they came to his attention first:
 
Or