SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A rare copy of the Book of Commandments, an early version of the Mormon church's Doctrine and Covenants, has been sold at an auction in New York for $391,000.
Chris Coover of Christie's auction house, which conducted Monday's auction, declined to identify the buyer, saying only that it was an individual rather than an institution.
Coover said the price sale was ``a record for a 19th century American printed book.''
``It was more than first editions by Poe, Melville and Longfellow have sold for,'' he said.
Christie's had acquired the book from the non-Mormon grandchildren of a book collector who had bought it at an auction in 1930.
Joseph Smith founded The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in upstate New York in 1830. Soon afterward, church leaders began to publish Smith's writings, which they believed to be the product of divine revelation.
The church bought a printing press and planned to print 10,000 copies of the Book of Commandments. But on July 20, 1833, a mob broke into the publisher's home and threw the press, type and printed sheets out a window.
Only about two dozen complete copies were saved.
An incomplete version sold last year for about $350,000, said Curt Bench, a Salt Lake City rare-book and document dealer. Christie's pre-sale estimate for the complete volume was $400,000 to $500,000.