A Collector’s Collection:The Rosenbach Museum & Library
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In terms of our Americana holdings, I could go on and on. I think it’s best if I give you a printed list of our Americana highpoints. [Hands me a printed list, several pages long, which reads in part:]
The Rosenbach’s collection of Americana (excluding American literature) consists of some 2,800 printed volumes and over 137,000 manuscripts, and ranges in date from Amerigo Vespucci’s Mundus novus (1504) to the typed carbon copy of the Atlantic Charter signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (August 1941).
….The Rosenbach collections are rich in explorers’ descriptions of Native peoples and their cultures; treaties (including a collection of 230 printed treaties made between the United States and various tribes between 1824 and 1869); and scriptures, liturgical, and devotional works produced for the use of Christian missionaries, many in Native American languages; Indian captivity narratives; and the first complete Bible printed in the Western Hemisphere (1661-1663), the “Eliot Indian Bible” in the Natick language of Massachusetts.
The collection is strongest in material of the colonial and revolutionary periods. It documents virtually every important aspect of American history; letters by Cortez and Pizarro detailing their activities in New World; a broadside published by the Virginia Company 1609 to interest stockholders in the settlement (one of three known copies); the famous Bay Psalm Book, one of only three still in its original binding; volumes of political tracts from the libraries of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson; survey maps by Washington; letters by Adams, Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Deane, etc. The period of the Civil War is particularly well documented in manuscript material by the major participants – Lincoln, Grant, and Lee. The list includes: Lee’s resignation from the Army in 1861; Lincoln’s manuscript of the Baltimore Address (April 18, 1864); the document proposing the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1865), signed by members of the House and Senate and Grant’s draft of his telegram announcing Lee’s surrender.
---From a leaflet entitled “The Americana Collection,” The Rosenbach Museum & Library, n.d.
AT: Actually, the biography contains a great story which illustrates both Dr. Rosenbach’s considerable talents as a salesman and his early appreciation of the importance of Americana and the Americas as a genre. Permit me, if you will, to indulge in a quote from the bio on the sale of a major Americana collection to a Mr. Edward S. Harkness here.
ALDE, Apr. 8: GUEVARA (ANTONIO DE). Histoire de Marc-Aurèle, Empereur Romain, vray miroir et horloge des Princes. Paris, Pierre et Galliot du Pré, frères, 1565. €3,000 to €4,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: HEURES DE LA VIERGE. Horæ in laudem beatissimæ virginis Mariæ ad usum Romanum. Paris, Charles L'Angelier, 1556. €4,000 to €5,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: MONTAIGNE (MICHEL DE). Les Essais. Édition nouvelle, trouvée après le deceds de l'autheur… Paris, Abel L'Angelier, 1595. €6,000 to €8,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: [ROJAS (FERNANDO DE)]. Celestina, tragicomedia di Calisto et Melibea, tradotta de lingua castigliana in italiano idioma… Venise, 1531. €2,000 to €3,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: CAMÕES (LUÍS DE). Os Lusiadas. Lisbonne, Pedro Crasbeeck, 1613. €2,000 to €3,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: CERVANTES (MIGUEL DE). El Ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Bruxelles, Roger Velpius & Huberto Antonio, 1611. €6,000 to €8,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: LA FONTAINE (JEAN DE). Fables choisies, mises en vers. Paris, Denys Thierry et Claude Barbin, 1678-1694. €6,000 to €8,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: CERVANTES (MIGUEL DE). El Ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid, Joaquin Ibarra, 1780. €3,000 to €4,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: DIDEROT (DENIS) ET JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. Paris, 1751-1765. €15,000 to €20,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: [LIVRE TISSÉ]. LAMARTINE (Alphonse de). Les Laboureurs. Poème tiré de Jocelyn… Lyon, J. A. Henry, 1883. €8,000 to €10,000.
ALDE, Apr. 8: [LIVRE TISSÉ]. Livre de prières tissé d'après les enluminures des manuscrits du XIVe au XVIe siècle. Lyon, [A. Roux], 1886. €5,000 to €6,000.
Sotheby’s Books, Manuscripts & Objects from Three Important Collections Open for Bidding 2-17 April
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: [Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun]. Le Roman de la Rose, [Geneva or Lyons, c.1481], first printed edition of the most important medieval French vernacular poem. £200,000 to £300,000.
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: Castiglione. Il libro del cortegiano. [Venice], April 1528, first edition, in a magnificent binding by Jean Picard for Jean Grolier. £100,000 to £150,000.
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: Jacobus de Cessolis. Schachzabelbuch, Strasbourg, 1483, von der Lasa copy. £50,000 to £70,000.
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: World Championship, 1972. A collection of 84 press photographs of the famed match between Spassky and Fischer. £2,000 to £3,000.
Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: Ben Franklin. Autograph letter signed, to Lord Shelburne, British Prime Minister, during peace negotiations, November 1782. £15,000 to £20,000.
