Rare Book Monthly Articles - November - 2016 Issue

Barry Ruderman:  ABAA, lost without his maps

Barry Ruderman: ABAA, lost without his maps

Barry was born in Rialto, California, April 23, 1962.  He attended Eisenhower High School (1980), the University of California, Riverside (BS in Economics, 1984) and the University of San Diego School of Law (Juris Doctorate, 1987). From age 8-13, he ran track and cross-country.  Thereafter, he played soccer for his high school and at UC Riverside, leaving him with a continuing passion for national and international play.  Even today when others are asleep he can sometimes still be found cheering European competitions in the middle of the night. He practiced Commercial Insolvency Law fro...

Old Books / New Editions. Part II.

Old Books / New Editions. Part II.

Welcome to this second installment in my three-part essay series on new editions of 17th-century women writers. This second essay discusses Alice Eardley's edition (2014) of an unusual, uncanonical...

A Conviction and Life Sentence for Bookseller's Killer

A Conviction and Life Sentence for Bookseller's Killer

Michael Danaher, a 50-year-old unemployed man from Peterborough, UK, has been convicted of the murder of Oxford bookseller Adrian Greenwood, 42. After a three-week trial, it took the jury less than...

Robert Fleck:  1947 - 2016

Robert Fleck: 1947 - 2016

We do not mourn the turning of leaves in fall neither do we feel their final passage from glorious life to cold earth.  We do not mourn but we remember, their sound in the trees, the rustle of leav...

Baseball Card Sets New Record Price at $3.12 Million

Baseball Card Sets New Record Price at $3.12 Million

Rising prices in paper ephemera were confirmed once again last month with another new record set for the price of a baseball card. And once again, the honored ballplayer was the man they called "Ho...

Orwell Values Soar As Dystopia Closes In

Orwell Values Soar As Dystopia Closes In

George Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair) is one of the few mid-20th century writers who has easily crossed over into the new century and also seen his literary reputation and monetary values rise. He...

Elections Matter

Elections Matter

In the United States we have seen a decline in literacy over the past forty years as the emphasis in education has moved from quality of learning to test taking.   For processes that require a stro...

Daniel Crouch Rare Books Opens New York Gallery

Daniel Crouch Rare Books Opens New York Gallery

Daniel Crouch Rare Books of London has announced the opening of a gallery in New York on November 1. The gallery is located at 24 East 64th Street. Hours will run from 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. Monday...

AbeBooks Adds "Collections," Where Sellers Can Compile Catalogues of Ephemeral and Highly Targeted Material

AbeBooks Adds "Collections," Where Sellers Can Compile Catalogues of Ephemeral and Highly Targeted Material

AbeBooks has added a new section to their website and it represents an expansion of the material the site is offering on behalf of its dealers. It's no secret the book market is not as robust as it...

Nov 8 & 9: Round 2 for La Bibliothèque de Pierre Bergé

Nov 8 & 9: Round 2 for La Bibliothèque de Pierre Bergé

A little less than a year ago I wrote an auction preview for the first sale of La Bibliothèque de Pierre Bergé, which is the collection of French industrialist and co-founder of Yves Saint Laurent ...

Nov 22-25: Bubb Kuyper's semi-annual auction of books, manuscripts, prints and drawings approaches

Nov 22-25: Bubb Kuyper's semi-annual auction of books, manuscripts, prints and drawings approaches

At Rare Book Hub, we try to include in our Upcoming Auctions all auction houses whose material is relevant to our focus on rare books, maps, and ephemera. That means houses of varying sizes from al...

Nov 22: Rare Books, Autographs and Photographs at Doyle New York

Nov 22: Rare Books, Autographs and Photographs at Doyle New York

Ted Ripley-Duggan, Vice-President of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Doyle New York, has a habit of preparing auction summaries for Rare Book Monthly that are more thorough than our normal auction pr...

Persian Letters... Part 2. A Story of Follow-Up Literature, Some Authentic, Some Fake

Persian Letters... Part 2. A Story of Follow-Up Literature, Some Authentic, Some Fake

I put a teacher of French literature at a loss the other day, talking about Voltaire’s Candid. “Are you serious?” I asked. “You never knew that Candid, getting tired of retirement, eventually left ...

eCatalogues:  the future has arrived

eCatalogues: the future has arrived

Tis’ the season to be jolly   From a distance the rare book business seems to be very similar to what it was twenty-five years ago but a closer look suggests not much is the same.  The Internet h...

AbeBooks Top 10 Highest Prices for the Summer of 2016

AbeBooks Top 10 Highest Prices for the Summer of 2016

AbeBooks has released the top 10 most expensive prices paid on their listing site for the three months ending in September. AbeBooks has been selling many related ephemeral items at the top of late...

Bookplates 1480-Present on Display at the Rosenbach

Bookplates 1480-Present on Display at the Rosenbach

Twenty-five years after the invention of the first printed book, there appeared the first known example of an intimately connected printed ephemeral item – the bookplate. The bookplate is the subje...

11 New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

11 New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

For November we review 11 new bookseller catalogues. This month's selection has an international flavor, reflective of the fact that the internet has broken down national borders when it comes to t...

Rare Book Monthly

  • Bonhams, Dec. 8-18: Autograph Letter Signed ("Martinus Luther") to His Friend the Theologian Gerhard Wiskamp ("Gerardo Xantho Lampadario"). $100,000 - $150,000.
    Bonhams, Dec. 8-18: An Exceptionally Fine Copy of Austenís Emma: A Novel in Three Volumes. $40,000 - $60,000.
    Bonhams, Dec. 8-18: Presentation Copy of Ernest Hemmingwayís A Farewell to Arms for Edward Titus of the Black Mankin Press. $30,000 - $50,000.
    Bonhams, Dec. 8-18: Autograph Manuscript Signed Integrally for "The Songs of Pooh," by Alan Alexander. $30,000 - $50,000.
    Bonhams, Dec. 8-18: Autograph Manuscript of "Three Fragments from Gˆtterd‰mmerung" by Richard Wagner. $30,000 - $50,000.
    Bonhams, Dec. 8-18: Original Preliminary Artwork, for the First Edition of Snow Crash. $20,000 - $30,000.
    Bonhams, Dec. 8-18: Autograph Letter Signed ("T.R. Malthus") to Economist Nassau Senior on Wealth, Labor and Adam Smith. $20,000 - $30,000.
    Bonhams, Dec. 8-18: History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides Finely Bound by Michael Wilcox. $20,000 - $30,000.
    Bonhams, Dec. 8-18: First Edition of Lewis and Clark: Travels to the Source of the Missouri River and Across the American Continent to the Pacific Ocean. $8,000 - $12,000.
    Bonhams, Dec. 8-18: Original Artwork for the First Edition of Neal Stephenson's Groundbreaking Novel Snow Crash. $100,000 - $150,000.
    Bonhams, Dec. 8-18: A Complete Set Signed Deluxe Editions of King's The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King. $8,000 - $12,000.
    Bonhams, Dec. 8-18: Autograph Letter Signed ("John Adams") to James Le Ray de Chaumont During the Crucial Years of the Revolutionary War. $8,000 - $12,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Book Week
    December 9-17, 2025
    Sotheby’s, Dec. 17: Francesco Colonna. Hypnerotomachie, Paris, 1546, Parisian calf by Wotton Binder C for Marcus Fugger. €200,000 to €300,000.
    Sotheby’s, Dec. 17: Nausea. De principiis dialectices Gorgias, and other works, Venice, 1523, morocco gilt for Cardinal Campeggio. €3,000 to €4,000.
    Sotheby’s, Dec. 17: Billon. Le fort inexpugnable de l'honneur, Paris, 1555, Parisian calf gilt for Peter Ernst, Graf von Mansfeld. €120,000 to €180,000.
    Sotheby’s
    Book Week
    December 9-17, 2025
    Sotheby’s, Dec. 16: Salinger, J.D. The Graham Family archive, including autographed letters, an inscribed Catcher, a rare studio photograph of the author, and more. $120,000 to $180,000.
    Sotheby’s, Dec. 16: [Austen, Jane]. A handsome first edition of Sense and Sensibility, the author's first novel. $60,000 to $80,000.
    Sotheby’s, Dec. 16: Massachusetts General Court. A powerful precursor to the Declaration of Independence: "every Act of Government … without the Consent of the People, is … Tyranny." $40,000 to $60,000.
  • Heritage Auctions
    Rare Books Signature Auction
    December 15, 2025
    Heritage, Dec. 15: John Donne. Poems, By J. D. With Elegies on the Author's Death. London: M[iles]. F[lesher]. for John Marriot, 1633.
    Heritage, Dec. 15: Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tarzan of the Apes.
    Heritage, Dec. 15: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Tender is the Night. A Romance.
    Heritage, Dec. 15: Bram Stoker. Dracula. Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1897.
    Heritage, Dec. 15: Jerry Thomas. How to Mix Drinks, or the Bon-Vivant's Companion, Containing Clear and Reliable Directions for Mixing All the Beverages Used in the United States…
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