Portrait of the CEO/Politico as Collector: Chatting with Steve Forbes

AE Monthly was lucky enough to talk with the elusive Mr. Forbes – a notoriously private collector – about his collecting interests and philosophies, just one week prior to what will surely be without exaggeration one of the most momentous occasions in the rare book and manuscript world for several years if not decades to come. The results of our conversation are transcribed below. AT stands for this interviewer; SF of course stands for the interviewee, Mr. Forbes.

AT: I want to start by thanking you for talking with me. I know that you’re a very busy man and that you are besieged by reporters wanting to have a word with you and I greatly appreciate your taking the time to talk to AE Monthly. Before we talk about the superb collection of documents that is coming to auction at Christie’s on October 9th – a follow up to the astoundingly successful first part of the sale of this collection last March -- I want to talk a little bit about the collection’s background and its history.

Why don’t we start at the beginning: why don’t you tell me about the origins of the Forbes Manuscript Collection, which was first created by your father and now is carried on primarily by you and your brother Bob?

SF: It started when my father [Malcolm Forbes, Sr.] was a youngster. He liked to cut out signatures of notable people who wrote to his father. He later learned of course that this was a horrible thing to do, for a collector, and he “unlearned” this habit. The collection started with a note by President Lincoln to Secretary of War Stanton asking for a sword for little Tad [Lincoln’s young son] to play with. My father purchased this, on time, in the late 1940s while he was still a student at Princeton.

AT: Why did books and manuscripts appeal so much to your father? Why do they appeal so much to you?

SF: They bring figures to life, which is one of the things that we emphasized in the collection. For instance, there is an autobiographical segment by George Washington on his first real combat with British General Braddock, during the French and Indian War. It is amazing to read this document about Washington’s first real battle. Books and manuscripts embody people. They bring people and events to life by observing what happened and putting a human spin on it. It’s the humanity behind it that makes books and manuscripts so special.

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Portrait of the CEO/Politico as Collector: Chatting with Steve Forbes

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Portrait of the CEO/Politico as Collector: Chatting with Steve Forbes

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