Rare Book Monthly Articles - November - 2008 Issue

Wiki Bibliographies: The Way to the Future

By Bruce McKinney This month I write about a mostly forgotten place, Rondout, New York, once a transportation hub at the intersection of the Rondout Creek and Hudson River [map link] that rose on opportunity and fell with its withdrawal. It was alter-ego to a Kingston that was better known, a lucky place where many found work and a few made fortunes. I return to Rondout to suggest that its now forgotten history, relating maps, books, ephemera and pamphlets provide an exceptional opportunity to consider an alternative way for material to be organized and presented on the web. I'm spea...

Major Settlement Reached on Google Book Copyright Suit

By Michael Stillman A groundbreaking settlement was announced October 28 concerning the unauthorized digitization and viewing of copyrighted books by search giant Google. It promises a level of ...

An Extraordinary Americana Auction at Bloomsbury Nov. 19

By Bruce McKinney The upcoming November 19th single owner sale at Bloomsbury Auctions in New York of the Jay T. Snider collection of early and important Americana with a strong emphasis on Phila...

Alibris Offers Its Sellers Historic Pricing Tool

By Michael Stillman Alibris has announced that it will be offering its sellers a new and extremely useful tool for valuing inventory. Access to their large database of sales history will now be ...

Opening a New Bookstore with Tim Lohraff

By Karen Wright I looked up "meta" in the dictionary and it can mean "among" or "with" or "change." I love being 'among books' and so does Tim Lohraff. While studying my brains out at the Co...

Evidence of Interest when the Circumstances are Right

By Bruce McKinney At auction on October 19th at John McInnis Auctioneers in Amesbury, Massachusetts, four lots in the category of Books, Manuscripts and Ephemera, did well. The evidence suggest...

Barnum Museum Finds Key to Its Origins on eBay

By Carl Burnham No man of his time was better at promotion and entertaining crowds than P.T. Barnum. Barnum is attributed with the saying "Without promotion something terrible happens... Nothing...

<i>In The News:</i> Declining Newspapers, Digitizing Books, Abe's Top 10

By Michael Stillman There was more bad news for the printed word, at least in newspaper form, in reports for the past six months recently released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The ABC of...

Rosemary Sullivan Rare Books to Disperse at Auction

By Bruce McKinney "All my life I've been a book collector and, for four decades, a bookseller." Thus are you introduced to Rosemary Sullivan, who in her three score and ten, is about to dispens...

Stalin's Cartoonist Passes On

By Michael Stillman A prolific political cartoonist passed away last month. His story is one of the more remarkable ones you will hear. Boris Yefimov is not a name well known in the West, but he...

Bookselling in a Red and Blue World

By Renée Magriel Roberts I'm at the computer today and should be doing something for the bookstore: entering a quantity of Ben Franklin-related materials, or putting together our pretty amazing ...

Libraries and Book Theft: A Role Reversal

By Michael Stillman Two Ohio men were indicted on October 2 in connection with the theft of two rare and valuable books from the Rurtherford B. Hayes Presidential Library. Joshua McCarty and Zac...

AE Comet: Genealogy & Local History - A Passion

By Bruce McKinney Click here for the November AE Comet. Genealogy is the history of people and local history the history of places. There was a time when the history of people and places wer...

10 Catalogues Reviewed This Month

This month, we take a look at ten new bookseller catalogues in the Review section of AE Monthly. The William Reese Company offers a selection of early voyages, while Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books h...

Rare Book Monthly

  • Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Winston Churchill. The Second World War. Set of First-Edition Volumes. 6,000 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: A.A. Milne, Ernest H. Shepard. A Collection of The Pooh Books. Set of First-Editions. 18,600 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Salvador Dalí, Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Finely Bound and Signed Limited Edition. 15,000 USD
    Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ian Fleming. Live and Let Die. First Edition. 9,500 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter Series. Finely Bound First Printing Set of Complete Series. 5,650 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. First Edition, First Printing. 4,200 USD
  • Bonhams, Apr. 28 – May 7: Isaac Newton on chemistry and matter, and alchemy, Autograph Manuscript, "A Key to Snyders," 3 pp, after 1674. $100,000 - $150,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 28 – May 7: Exceptionally rare first printing of Plato's Timaeus. Florence, 1484. $50,000 - $80,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 28 – May 7: On the Philosophy of Self-Interest: Adam Smith's copy of Helvetius's De l'homme, Paris, 1773. $40,000 - $60,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 28 – May 7: "Magical Calendar of Tycho Brahe" - very rare hermetic broadside. Engraved by Merian for De Bry. c.1618. $30,000 - $50,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 28 – May 7: Author's presentation issue of Einstein's proof of Relativity, "Erklärung der Perihelbewegung des Merkur aus der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie." 1915. $30,000 - $50,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 28 – May 7: First Latin edition of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed. Paris, 1520. $20,000 - $30,000.
    Bonhams, Apr. 28 – May 7: De Broglie manuscript on the nature of matter in quantum physics, 3 pp, 1954. $20,000 - $30,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 28 – May 7: Tesla autograph letter signed on electricty and electromagnetic theory. 1894. $20,000 - $30,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 28 – May 7: Heinrich Hertz scientific manuscript on his mentor Hermann Von Helmholtz, 1891. $20,000 - $30,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 28 – May 7: The greatest illustrated work in Alchemy: Micheal Maier's Atalanta Fugiens. Oppenheim, 1618. $30,000 - $50,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 28 – May 7: Illustrated Alchemical manuscript, a Mysterium Magnum of the Rosicurcians, 18th-century. $30,000 - $50,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 28 – May 7: Rare Largest Paper Presentation Copy of Newton's Principia, London, 1726. The third and most influential edition. $60,000 - $90,000
  • Doyle, May 1: Thomas Jefferson expresses fears of "a war of extermination" in Saint-Dominigue. $40,000 to $60,000.
    Doyle, May 1: An exceptional presentation copy of Fitzgerald's last book, in the first issue dust jacket. $25,000 to $35,000.
    Doyle, May 1: The rare first signed edition of Dorian Gray. $15,000 to $25,000.
    Doyle, May 1: The Prayer Book of Jehan Bernachier. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Doyle, May 1: Van Dyck's Icones Principum Virorum Doctorum. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Doyle, May 1: The magnificent Cranach Hamlet in the deluxe binding by Dõrfner. $7,000 to $10,000.
    Doyle, May 1: A remarkable unpublished manuscript of a voyage to South America in 1759-1764. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Doyle, May 1: Bouchette's monumental and rare wall map of Lower Canada. $12,000 to $18,000.
    Doyle, May 1: An rare original 1837 abolitionist woodblock. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Doyle, May 1: An important manuscript breviary in Middle Dutch. $15,000 to $25,000.
    Doyle, May 1: An extraordinary Old Testament manuscript, circa 1250. $20,000 to $30,000.

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