Rare Book Monthly
The Historical Auction Series No.1 The Henry C. Murphy Sale March 3-March 8, 1884
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Before we delve into the sale of his books, let’s first start with a few more details about Henry C. Murphy the man. Murphy was far from an anonymous book collector, and it is hard to say how much his high profile – especially in what would become New York City -- affected the high profile reporting of the sale at that time. The Hon. Henry Cruse Murphy was born in Brooklyn in 1810 and passed away in 1882 (two years before this sale of his books: math mavens step forward). From this simple fact alone we learn that Murphy’s books were sold not for him but for revenue for his heirs. During the majority of Murphy’s adult and perhaps teen life he collected books, specifically Americana, but he also accomplished much else: “In life, he was a politician who became Mayor of Brooklyn and later a Congressman twice with a defeat in between.” (From the ÆD, Source Details).
The young Mr. Murphy graduated from Columbia College with honors in 1830 and was admitted to the bar in 1833. Over the next twenty years he rose through various elected and appointed positions to emerge as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States on the Democratic ticket in 1852. But what JFK did not achieve until 1960 Mr. Murphy could not do in 1852. As a consolation, incoming President Buchanan sent him to Europe as United States Minister to Holland where he would have found many early books on New York in Dutch, an area he excelled in collecting. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln recalled him, returning the politician and bibliophile, to the area that would five decades later become home to Ebbets Field and the Dodgers. The final 22 years of his life would be a steady march. As a politician he would continue to be active in the New York State Senate for 10 years. The Brooklyn Bridge, begun under his leadership in 1870 would be dedicated in 1883, a year after his death.
So in Murphy we have not just another collector but an accomplished citizen and activist in the arena of local and even national/international politics. But there was another side of Murphy, succinctly summed up in the ÆD Source Details: “…As a book collector he [Murphy] was exceptional. His library was complex and complete to the point of obsession but it was the age to obsess and he did so very effectively. It is no longer possible to do what he did. In his time he saw the opportunity and made the most of it. That chance will not come again.”
This sense of a chance-gone-by is certainly one the modern bibliophile confronts on looking at the Murphy Sale Catalogue (Catalogue of the Magnificent Library of Late Hon. Henry C. Murphy of Brooklyn, Long Island, Consisting Almost Wholly of Americana or Books Relating to America…Geo.[rge] A. Leavitt & Co., Auctioneers, [New York, 1884, 440 pages long]), on looking at the Murphy records in the ÆD, and on looking at coverage of the Murphy Sale in the contemporary press.
