• Forum Auctions
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    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: [Langland (William)]. The vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde time imprinted..., Roberte Crowley, 1550. £8,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: [Shakespeare (William)]. [Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies], second folio edition, [by Tho.Cotes, for Robert Allot], [1632]. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Bible, Czech Biblia Bohemica, first complete Bible printed in the Czech vernacular, Prague, August 1488. £30,000 to £40,000.
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    Forum Mar. 28: Shabthai Tzvi.- Collection of four printed and illustrated broadsides detailing the appearance, rise and fall of the false messiah, Shabthai Tzvi, Augsburg, 1666-67. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [fourteenth century (c.1310)]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Aubrey (John). [Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme], manuscript in English, Latin and Greek, [c. 1693]. £30,000 to £50,000.
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    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Poems on Various Occasions, first edition, Harriet Maltby's copy, Newark, Printed by S. & J. Ridge, 1807. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression with dust-jacket, 1937 [but 1938]. £7,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Blake (William).- Thornton (Robert John). The Pastorals of Virgil, 2 vol., engraved plates by William Blake, 1821. £8,000 to £12,000.
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    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: America.- Mount (William J.) & Thomas Page. The English Pilot…, [bound with] The Fourth Book, describing The West Indies Navigation from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones, 1721. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Oldfield (Henry Ambrose), Rajman Singh Chitrakar & others. An album of 160 photographs and 13 original artworks, (1833-1919), [c. 1850s-1880s]. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Audubon (John James) [and William MacGillivray]. Ornithological Biography…, 5 vol., first edition, presentation copy inscribed by Audubon, Edinburgh, 1831-49 [i.e. 1831-39]. £10,000 to £15,000.
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    19th Century Shop. Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, the great celestial atlas
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    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Alken (Henry). Sporting Notions, first edition, T.McLean, 1832-33. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Bardi (Lorenzo). Nuova Raccolta delle piu interessanti Vedute della Citta di Firenze…, Florence, Lorenzo Bardi, [c.1840]. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Crawfurd (John). Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava..., first edition, 1829. £1,000 to £1,500.
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    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Dawe (George, engraver). The Life of a Nobleman, first edition, Geo. Henderson, [c.1825]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: [Doyle (John)], "H.B.". Political Sketches &c., 10 vol. including The Descriptive Key to H.B., Thomas McLean, [1829-51]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Eben (Adolphus Christian Frederick, Baron von) and Nicolaus Heideloff. Modèles de l'Uniforme Militaire Adopté dans l'Armée Royale de Suède, Rudolph Ackerman, 1808. £1,500 to £2,000.
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    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Geissler (J.G.G.) and Friedrich Hempel. Mahlerische Darstellungen der Sitten, Gebrauche und Lustbarkeiten bey den Russischen, Tartarischen…, 4 parts in 1, Leipzig and Paris, [1804]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Hunt (Charles). Portraits of Winning Horses...of the Derby, Oaks, & St. Leger, from the Year 1842 to 1849…, Rock Brothers & Payne, 1849. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Kunike (Adolf Friedrich). Zwey hundert und sechzig Donau-Ansichten nach dem Laufe des Donaustromes…, Vienna, Leopold Grund, 1826. £3,000 to £5,000.
    Forum Auctions
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    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Lasinio (Carlo). [Matrimony], Florence, 1790. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Reinhardt (Joseph). A Collection of Swiss Costumes, in Miniature, second English edition, James Goodwin, [1828]. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Wengen (Gottfried Durst von). Die Öffentliche Maskerade Bamberg am Fastnachts-Montage 1833…, Bamberg, [1833]. £2,000 to £3,000.
  • Sotheby’s
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Rare Book Monthly

Articles - July - 2004 Issue

The Old Booksellers of New York and other papers<br>By William Loring Andrews

none


The January number of 1795 contains an interesting engraving of the Government House, so called because it was appropriated to the use of the Governors of the State, although originally intended as a presidential residence when it was thought that New York would be fixed upon as the Capitol City of the country. This building was erected on the spot where Fort George formerly stood, fronting Broadway. The view is taken from the northwest corner of the Battery near the end of Greenwich Street, and shows a part of the city and some portion of the Battery.

In the same volume (October, 1795) we have the last of these attractive pictures of old New York. The series closes with a view of St. Paul's Church, which displays, in addition to the chapel, the lower portion of the City Hall Park, then surrounded by wooden palings. The spire of this venerable edifice still points heavenward, as it did in the days when Anderson drew its graceful outlines, but every other architectural landmark depicted in the pages of the New York Magazine has long since vanished as completely as the baseless fabric of a dream.

With the exception of a few comparatively large engravings, such as the memorial portrait of Washington standing on a pedestal in front of Bowling Green (also engraved by Tiebout), that rara avis among New York prints known as the Rip Van Dam plate of the Middle Dutch Church, and the "Federal Edifice" in the Columbian Magazine, the old periodical before us supplies all the engravings of New York in the latter part of the last century that to the best of my knowledge exist. These penciled records of the past are few and simple, but precious in the sight of every collector of memorials of this goodly town of Manhattan, and in their modest, unpretentious way they supply important links in the chain of our topographical history.

THE EARLY AMERICAN ALMANAC
The world's a scene of changes and to be
Constant in nature were inconstancy,
For 'twere to break the laws herself has made,
Our substances themselves do fleet and fade;
The most fixed Being still does move and fly
Swift as the wings of Time 'tis measured by."
   Atnes's Almanac, l760.

   THE first product of the printing-press which Stephen Daye set up under the shadow of Harvard College, before the walls of that infant seat of learning were fairly dry, was a pamphlet, "The Freeman's Oath," to which immediately succeeded an Almanac for the Year of our Lord 1639. We surmise the compiler thereof, one Mr. William Pierce, to have been a weather-beaten old salt, who having abandoned his seafaring life and cast his moorings ashore for the remainder of his days, was ready to turn his nautical knowledge to practical account. He modestly disclaims the academic title of Philomath assumed by Almanac makers in general, and subscribes himself simply "Mariner."

The following year Daye covered his name as a typographer with imperishable glory by printing the first book ever issued from a press in this part of America, "The Psalms in Metre," or the "New England Version of the Psalms," commonly known as the "Bay Psalm Book," and to the bibliophile as
" One of the books we read about
But very seldom see."
One or more Almanacs were issued annually by Daye and by his successor, Samuel Green, whose name is conspicuous in the typographical annals of this country as the printer of "Eliot's Indian Bible," that extremely useful book which it is said no man living can read. Following in the wake of these early Cambridge printers, every enterprising proprietor of a hand-press and font of type during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries felt it his bounden duty—or found it to his pecuniary interest—to provide the community with a yearly Calendar. Suspended behind the farmhouse kitchen-door, this silent monitor of the passing hours repeated from year to year its trustworthy predictions of returning seed-time and harvest and its dubious prophecies of rain and sunshine, heat and cold, until, yellowed with smoke, begrimed by constant use and thumbed to bits, the last fragment of a leaf fell fluttering to the ground. In view of the extremely utilitarian role they were called upon to play, it is not singular that old Almanacs not things of rags and tatters are difficult to find.

In those primitive days presumably few books beside the Bible, the Psalm-book, the Almanac, and now and then a printed sermon of one of the reverend fathers of the Church—Increase or Cotton Mather, Thomas Shephard or Samuel Willard—found their way over the rugged New England hills to remote and scattered Puritan homes. In the hard struggle for existence of pioneer life, with its scant hours of leisure, they doubtless sufficed for the intellectual requirements of the inmates. We are inclined to believe that the Almanac occupied a higher place in popular estimation than its numerical strength (1 to 4) in this primitive family library would indicate. If the question of dispensing with either the sermon or the Almanac came to a vote in the domestic circle, we would not rely with confidence upon the staying powers of the sermon, especially if it were one of those highly impressive religious discourses which the divines of Massachusetts did on occasion preach of a quiet Sabbath day morning to a youth in his teens, in the presence of the congregation which during the coming week was to escort the culprit to the gallows, and under the blue sky of heaven hang him for the crime of sheep-stealing.

The feast of fat things that the makers of these harbingers of the new year strove to provide for their readers is thus humorously set forth by Dr. Franklin, in his Almanac "Poor Richard Improved" for 1756:

Rare Book Monthly

  • Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [RUTH, George Herman “Babe” (1895-1948)]. Signed photograph. Circa 1930s. 191 x 248 mm. $1,500 to $2,500.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HARRISON, Benjamin. Document signed (“Benj Harrison”) as governor of Virginia, certifying the service of Daniel Cumbo, a Black Revolutionary soldier. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: ONE OF THE FIRST PRINTED ANNOUNCEMENTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
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    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: FIRST PRINTING OF LINCOLN’S IMMORTAL GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HIGHLY IMPORTANT MORMON ARCHIVE. ALLEY, George. Archive of 23 Autograph Letters Signed by Mormon Convert George Alley to His Brother Joseph Alley. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [AVIATION]. [ARMSTRONG, Neil A.] Aviation Hall of Fame Gold Medal MS64 NGC, Awarded to Neil Armstrong in 1979. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
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    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
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    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: NEWLY DISCOVERED FIRST PRINTING OF "WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE... " FROM THE ONLY NEWSPAPER ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL PROCESSION. $4,000 to $8,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: THE MOST IMPORTANT GEORGE WASHINGTON DOCUMENT IN PRIVATE HANDS; GEORGE WASHINGTON’S COMMISSION AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF, 1775, ONE OF ONLY TWO ORIGINALS. $150,000 to $250,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: A VERY RARE ACCOUNT OF BLACKBEARD’S DEATH AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PIRATE ITEMS EXTANT. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
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    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: EDISON, Thomas. Patent for Edison’s Improvements on the Electric-Light, No. 219,628. [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Patent Office], 16 September 1879. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [VIETNAM WAR]. The original pen used by Secretary of State William P. Rogers to sign the Vietnam Peace Agreement, Paris, 27 January 1973. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: SONS OF LIBERTY FOUNDER COLONEL BARRÉ ANNOTATED TITLE-PAGE, “WHICH OUGHT TO ROUSE UP BRITISH ATTENTION”. $4,000 to $6,000.
  • Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG BEADED JUDICIAL COLLAR. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A COMPLETE RUN OF VISIONAIRE MAGAZINE THROUGH 2010. $6,000 - $9,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: LAW REVIEW OFFPRINT SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG. $3,000 - $5,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: META REBNER'S WORKING SCRIPT OF THE LOVED ONE. $1,500 - $2,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A KATHY GROVE PORTRAIT OF CYNDI LAUPER FOR THE FEBRUARY 1989 DETAILS COVER. $800 - $1,200
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A PLASTIC COAT BY MILLIE DAVID FEATURED IN SOHO NEWS STYLE SECTION, FROM THE COLLECTION OF ANNIE FLANDERS. $500 - $700
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG JEWELRY BOX. $600 - $900
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A SET OF JONI MITCHELL LYRICS FOR "IF I HAD A HEART." $2,000 - $3,000

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