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<b><center>Dominic Winter Auctioneers<br>September 27<br>The Library of the Late Christopher Foyle of Beeleigh Abbey: Part One</b><b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Bible, Dominican Use, in Latin. Illuminated manuscript on vellum, [France: probably Paris, c. 1240]. £10,000-15,000<b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Book of Hours, <i>in French with Latin cues.</i> Illuminated manuscript on vellum [France, Normandy, early(?) 15th century]. £10,000-15,000.<b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Book of Hours, <i>Use of Rouen, in Latin and French.</i> Illuminated manuscript on vellum, [France: Rouen, c. 1480]. £30,000-40,000<b><center>Dominic Winter Auctioneers<br>September 27<br>The Library of the Late Christopher Foyle of Beeleigh Abbey: Part One</b><b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Mary I (1516-1558). <i>Queen of England, 1553-1558.</i> Letter signed, ‘Marye the Quene’, Greenwich, 7 January 1558. £15,000-20,000<b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Jonson (Ben). Works, 1st collected edition, 3 volumes, 1640. £7,000-10,000<b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Essex. A sammelband of 27 English Civil War pamphlets mostly relating to the siege of Colchester, Essex, 1648. £5,000-8,000<b><center>Dominic Winter Auctioneers<br>September 27<br>The Library of the Late Christopher Foyle of Beeleigh Abbey: Part One</b><b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Latham (Simon). Latham’s Faulconry, or the Faulcons Lure and Cure, 2 parts in one, 1658/. £2,000-3,000<b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Exquemelin (Alexandre Olivier). The History of the Bucaniers of America, 2 volumes in 1, 2nd edition, 1695. £1,000-1,500<b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Campbell (Patrick). Travels in the interior inhabited parts of North America..., 1st ed., 1793. £5,000-8,000<b><center>Dominic Winter Auctioneers<br>September 27<br>The Library of the Late Christopher Foyle of Beeleigh Abbey: Part One</b><b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Burton (Richard F.). Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, 3 volumes, 1st edition, 1855-56. £5,000-8,000<b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Cosway-style binding. Napoleon and the Fair Sex, 1894. One of 9 similar lots. £1,000-1,500<b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Shepard (Ernest Howard, 1879-1976). Pooh and Piglet, original pen and ink drawing, 1958. £20,000-30,000
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<center><b>Sotheby's<br>English Literature and History<br>Available for Immediate Purchase</b><b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> William Shakespeare. <i>A Midsummer-Night's Dream,</i> 1908. 7,500 USD<b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. <i>Brontës' Novels,</i> 1922. 2,400 USD<b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> Lewis Carroll. <i>Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There,</i> 1872. 25,000 USD<b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> Charles Dickens. Collection of Fiction including <i>Oliver Twist</i> and <i>Sketches by Boz,</i> 1838-1865. 6,250 USD<b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> Mary Shelley. <i>Frankenstein,</i> 1839. 4,250 USD<b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> James Joyce. <i>Ulysses,</i> 1925. 2,500 USD<b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> Jane Austen. <i>The Complete Works of Jane Austen,</i> 1901. 5,250 USD
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<center><b>Jeschke Jadi Auctions Berlin<br>Rare Books, Prints, Historical Photography<br>29 September 2023</b><b>Jeschke Jádi, Sep. 29:</b> Jan Theodor de Bry. <i>Anthologia magna sive Florilegium novum.</i> 1626. 9,000 €<b>Jeschke Jádi, Sep. 29:</b> John Locke. <i>Epistola de tolerantia ad Clarissimum Virum T.A.R.P.T.O.L.A.</i> 1689. 9000 €<b>Jeschke Jádi, Sep. 29:</b> F. T. Marinetti, Boccioni, Pratella, Carrà, a.o. <i>Collection of 35 Futurist manifestos.</i> 1909-1933. 7000 €<b>Jeschke Jádi, Sep. 29:</b> Johann Elert Bode, Rare engraved celestial globe. (1804). 6000 €<b>Jeschke Jádi, Sep. 29:</b> Sebastian Brant (ed.). <i>Tertia pars huius operis in se continens glosam ordinariam cum expositione lyre litterali et morali.</i> 1498. 5000 €
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<center><b>Christie’s<br>Charlie Watts: Literature and Jazz<br>London and online auction<br>15–29 September</b><b>Christie’s, Explore now:</b><br>F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940). <i>The Great Gatsby.</i> New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925. £100,000–150,000<b>Christie’s, Explore now:</b><br>Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930). </i>The Hound of the Baskervilles: Another Adventure of Sherlock Holmes.</b> London: George Newnes, 1902. £70,000–100,000<b>Christie’s, Explore now:</b><br>Agatha Christie (1890–1976). <i>The Thirteen Problems.</i> London: for the Crime Club Ltd. by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1932. £40,000–60,000<b>Christie’s, Explore now:</b><br>Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961). <i>The Maltese Falcon.</i> New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930. £30,000–50,000
Rare Book Monthly
Libraries: Dinosaurs of the Modern Era
By Bruce McKinney
Libraries in America are a hot topic these days, deer in the headlights of both cost cutters and the next generation of technologists. They are easy prey. Twenty-seven years ago Ronald Reagan was elected President with a mandate to downsize government. He set in motion a process that continues today, the evisceration of services once taken for granted that are now endangered. Today he sleeps with the fish and hears not the wails.
In truth his is not the only name attached to this unfolding disaster. Politicians who knew or should have known better have for more than a generation opted to reduce Federal government in the name of personal empowerment. The message is easily transmitted. The electorate votes for tax cutters and against candidates who support tax increases. As a consequence national, state and local governments are now over-run with elected officials whose mandates are to dismantle American life. They succeed and institutions such as libraries fail. It turns out there is no free lunch.
What libraries provide are indirect benefits, kind of like directions to the baseball game: go one mile, turn left on Sanchez, right on Wallace at the second light. Look for the Carvel stand and turn left. The baseball field is at the end of the street. Most of what is worth doing takes time and concentration. It is not instant gratification. Rather, it requires time, experience and perspective. In other words, libraries teach patience.
Reading is an acquired skill, love of reading the lucky consequence of encountering great material when the mind is open to its possibilities: the alternative to symphonic reading Googling for answers. It saves time but loses the feeling. You can read the Gettysburg address on line. To understand Lincoln, the times, the circumstances and this speech's impact you need to read books. Google and all the other search engines combined are not enough.
So the recent decision in Jackson County, Oregon to close their libraries is disappointing at a distance and a catastrophe up close. For the county this is just reality playing out. For most of a hundred years the county received Federal timber subsidies. Recently Congress failed to reauthorize funds to prop up rural economies and responsibility then fell to local voters to approve a tax increase to keep libraries alive. By a vote of 58.3% to 41.7% the voters declined and so the libraries have closed. In doing so Jackson County becomes the nation's largest library closure. It won't be the last. We are emptying the nation's treasury and turning a caring nation into one that cares only for itself.
This is all part and parcel of the destruction and elimination of government services. We devalue teachers, defeat school budgets, stand by while strange local boards impose 16th century logic on 21st century students, close mental hospitals and build more prisons, fund weapons and wage war. We take more for ourselves and leave less for others.
We do not do these things because we close libraries. Rather we close libraries because we do these things. And we should stop.