Whitney heirs reclaim stolen rare books, plan charity auction
A cache of stolen rare books—including 37 John Keats love letters, a signed James Joyce Finnegans Wake, and Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis—worth about $3 million, was returned to John Hay Whitney and Betsey Whitney's heirs decades after the 1980s theft from a Long Island home; the items were recovered after a would-be seller contacted New York rare-book dealers and alerted authorities, and the heirs plan to auction the collection and donate the proceeds.