Rare Book Monthly Articles - September - 2013 Issue

AE - Turning over a new leaf

The Americana Exchange website you see today is the 5th iteration in the company’s 11 year history.  The look is refreshed and the databases enlarged to handle the ever-increasing volume of records.  In mid August the AED reached five million full text records.  Over the next two years we’ll reach six and move on to seven.   While the site is different it is also very similar.  Here is an update.   The home page looks familiar but the images are larger and automatically reorient the nearby text to accommodate more images if and as needed.  These flickering ads incorporate up to 20 images ...

Sometimes in Unlikely Places: Interesting Maps

The Goodyear Tire folks of Akron, in the mid 1980’s decided, under the direction of Janet Schirn of Chicago, a past president of the American Society of Interior Designers, to build a collection of...

A Day at the Races

A day at the races   I took a week off to think about the future of book collecting and was reminded that a week is not a very long time.  Oh well, it was what was possible.  This isn’t going to ...

FBI Still Seeking Owners of 28 Maps and Books Stolen by Forbes Smiley

The FBI (U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation) is still looking for the owners of 28 maps and books stolen by map seller E. Forbes Smiley sometime before 2006. Smiley was the major Martha's Vineyar...

Selling the Collection - No Easy Answers

This month’s article is the outgrowth of a query to an on-line list-serve populated mainly by book dealers. No long ago the following post was received: “Suppose for the moment that you are a "civ...

Here is How to Search All Auction Listings from One Place

September marks the start of the fall auction season and this promises to be an extremely busy one. The amount of material coming out has been growing rapidly over the past couple of years as colle...

Koller Zurich: The Sweep of History on the 21st

On September 21st in Zurich, Switzerland Koller Auctions is holding their twice annual sale of interesting and important works on paper including autographs, manuscripts and illuminated manuscripts...

Auctions in September

As the fall calendar takes shape there are 53 events scheduled and invariably many more that will be announced soon.  Here is an overview but also check the auction calendar for more events and the...

End of a Love Affair: Art from the Collection of Mrs. T. S. Eliot to be Auctioned This Fall

A major art auction is scheduled for November 20 at Christie's in London, and while we normally don't write about art auctions, this one has a connection to books. The collection arose from the wor...

AE at Eleven Years

The past ten years have seen the already endlessly described transition from traditional bibliography, book selling and book collecting from the last days of the way Grandpa did it to the advent of...

Marie de Hautefort: Beauty & Politics

In France, when there’s a castle—or a church—there’s an old book not far away. Rich people and religious people have indeed been the guardians of arts and culture for dozens of centuries. There lay...

A Site That May Help You Find New Books to Read

Here is a story that isn't news, or if it is news, it's old news, which sounds like an oxymoron to me. However, it was new to me, and probably will be to many of you, so here it goes, two years lat...

Two New Catalogues Reviewed for the End of Summer

The dog days of summer are obviously not the best of times for mailing new catalogues. Everyone is holding on to the last days of summer, enjoying their final vacations, before the fall onslaught o...

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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