Rare Book Monthly Articles - December - 2019 Issue

Site Changes Coming on Rare Book Hub:  the only constant is change.

Site Changes Coming on Rare Book Hub: the only constant is change.

For Americana Exchange and more recently its successor Rare Book Hub change has always been part of the equation.  Change online is necessary as the structure of the Internet evolves, speeds increase, and underlying assumptions about how websites function and are used, change.  Early on the focus was on duplicating print services electronically. The idea was to create a great portable library that researchers could access at their desks.  For those who tried it in 2002, it worked but most did not need it because the post-World War II structure of the rare book business was still, if waverin...

A Complex Year for collectors, libraries and dealers

A Complex Year for collectors, libraries and dealers

The world is in flux.  Books have a history but do they have a future?  Let’s consider the perspectives.   Change has always been part of the human experience but rarely have the changes been so ...

Unique Charlotte Bronte Book Makes It Home after a 189-Year Journey

Unique Charlotte Bronte Book Makes It Home after a 189-Year Journey

A book by Charlotte Bronte is finally coming home, after passing through the hands of two criminals, 189 years after it was written. The home of Charlotte and her star-crossed sisters is now the Pa...

Books Are Disappearing from an Idaho Library, But It's No Theft

Books Are Disappearing from an Idaho Library, But It's No Theft

Books disappearing from library shelves is a longstanding problem that still plagues libraries despite all the security cameras and measures taken over the years. However, a strange case of disappe...

William H. Bonney Lives on

William H. Bonney Lives on

Billy the Kid was a bad guy who achieved immortality killing people back when killing people one at a time still made the news.  These days it takes 5 to make the papers on a busy day or occasional...

A Library Dies, Its Books A-Mouldering in Their Grave

A Library Dies, Its Books A-Mouldering in Their Grave

The sad story of the death of a library in Jackson, Mississippi, recently completed its final act. The library board has abandoned its interest in the building, its 34,000 books destroyed, and many...

Cartouche ou Le Vice Puni: First, Pirate and Best Editions...

Cartouche ou Le Vice Puni: First, Pirate and Best Editions...

Louis-Dominique Cartouche (1693-1721), the most famous French robber of the Ancien Régime, inspired many writers including Nicolas Racot de Grandval, who published Le Vice Puni, ou Cartouche (Anver...

Shapero Rare Books' Parent Reports a Return to Profitability

Shapero Rare Books' Parent Reports a Return to Profitability

Things are looking up for rare book seller Shapero Rare Books and its parent company. Shapero Rare Books is part of publicly traded company Scholium Group, which means it is required to provide aud...

Allom’s Chinese Empire Series Images Are Wide Ranging & Detailed

Allom’s Chinese Empire Series Images Are Wide Ranging & Detailed

Described as,”Arguably one of the most appealing pictorial books published during the mid-1800s, The Chinese Empire Illustrated, (known also as China, its scenery, architecture, social habits c. il...

Offering the Repugnant

Offering the Repugnant

Recently in Germany at auction house Hermann Historica in a sale of German Contemporary History, 842 lots including hundreds of Nazi items were sold.  For many the idea that such material is availa...

Annual Northampton Book and Book Arts Fair Held on December 6-7

Annual Northampton Book and Book Arts Fair Held on December 6-7

The annual Northampton Book and Book Arts Fair will be held on Friday, December 6, and Saturday, December 7 this year. Hours on Friday are 5:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Hours on Saturday are 10:00 a.m. - 4...

eCatalogues:  just in time for the holidays

eCatalogues: just in time for the holidays

As we enter this holiday season we want to remind our members and visitors of the cataloging trend now well underway, that is seeing the decline of the printed catalogue in favor of the eCatalogue ...

Fourteen New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

Fourteen New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

For December we review 14 new bookseller catalogues. The Raab Collection celebrates 30 years in the field with a selection of important autograph material. Mark Funke Bookseller offers a spectacula...

Rare Book Monthly

  • Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    26th March 2026
    Forum, Mar. 26: Book of Hours.- Heures a lusaige de Romme, printed on vellum, with 14 full-page illuminated miniatures, Paris, N. Higman for J. de Brie, [c.1521]. £20,000-30,000
    Forum, Mar. 26: France.- Book of Hours, perhaps Use of the Abbey of Saint-Gildas de Rhuys, with thirteen miniatures surviving from an original cycle of at least twenty, [c. 1430]. £15,000-20,000
    Forum, Mar. 26: Milton (John). Paradise lost. A Poem in Ten Books, first edition, Pforzheimer's sixth state, S. Simmons, 1669. £8,000-12,000
    Forum, Mar. 26: Blake (William). Illustrations of the Book of Job, one of 215 first issue "Proof" copies, this one of 65 copies on "French" paper, Published by the Author, March 8, 1825 [but March, 1826]. £15,000-20,000
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    26th March 2026
    Forum, Mar. 26: Christie (Agatha). The ABC Murders, first edition, The Crime Club, 1936. £15,000-20,000
    Forum, Mar. 26: Halley (Edmund). Astronomiae Cometicae Synopsis, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, no. 297, pp.1882-99, March 1705. £10,000-15,000
    Forum, Mar. 26: Haytham (Ibn al) [known as Alhazen]. Opticae Thesaurus...Item Vitellonis Thuringopoloni libri X..., first edition, Basel, August, 1572. £20,000-30,000
    Forum, Mar. 26: Kepler (Johannes). Dioptrice seu demonstratio eorum quae visui & visibilibus propter conspicilla non ita pridem inventa accidunt, first edition, Augsburg, David Frank, 1611. £12,000-18,000
  • Forum Auctions
    Natural History: The remaining stock of Antiquariaat Junk, 1899-2026
    25 March 2026
    Forum, Mar. 25: Botany.- Andrews (H.C.) Coloured Engravings of Heaths, 4 vol. in 2, first edition, [1710,--94]-1802-1809-[1830]. £10,000 - £15,000.
    Forum, Mar. 25: Butterflies.- Cramer (Pierre) and Caspar Stoll. De Uitlandsche Kapellen voorkomende in de drie Waereld-Deelen…,, 5 vol., Amsterdam & Utrecht, 1779-91. £8,000 - £12,000.
    Forum, Mar. 25: Voyages.- Darwin (Charles) and others. Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle, 3 vol. in 4, including Appendix to vol.2, first edition, 1839. £8,000 - £12,000.
    Forum, Mar. 25: Butterflies.- de Graaf (Willem Diederik Vincent). [Inlandsche Kapellen in beeld], 170 fine original watercolours, [Enkhuizen], [1800-40]. £8,000 - £12,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Natural History: The remaining stock of Antiquariaat Junk, 1899-2026
    25 March 2026
    Forum, Mar. 25: Birds.- Dresser (Henry Eeles). A History of the Birds of Europe, 9 vol., including supplement, first edition, by the author, 1871-96. £6,000 - £8,000.
    Forum, Mar. 25: Zoology.- Felines.- Elliot (Daniel Giraud). A Monograph of the Felidæ or Family of the Cats, first edition, for the Subscribers, by the Author, [1878]-1883. £25,000 - £30,000.
    Forum, Mar. 25: Birds.- Frisch (Johann Leonard). Vorstellung der Vögel Deutschlandes, 2 vol., first edition, Berlin, Friedr. Wilhelm Birnsteil, [1736]-1763. £40,000 - £60,000.
    Forum, Mar. 25: Birds.- Gould (John). The Birds of Great Britain, 5 vol., first edition, by the author, 1862-1873. £30,000 - £40,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Natural History: The remaining stock of Antiquariaat Junk, 1899-2026
    25 March 2026
    Forum, Mar. 25: Pomology.- France.- Poiteau (A.) Pomologie Française. Recueil des Plus Beaux Fruits cultivés en France, 4 vol., Paris, 1846. £30,000 - £40,000.
    Forum, Mar. 25: Botany.- [Robin (Jean)]. Histoire des Plantes, nouvellement trouvées en l'Isle Virgine…,, 1620; with Geoffrey Linocier L'Histoire des plantes, second edition, 1619-20. £3,000 - £4,000.
    Forum, Mar. 25: Asia.- Japan.- Siebold (P.F. von). Nippon. Archiv zur Beschreibung von Japan, 7 parts in 6 vol., first edition, Leyden, [1832]-1852. £35,000 - £45,000.
    Forum, Mar. 25: Asia.- Valentijn (Francois). Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën..., 5 vol. in 8, first edition, Dordrecht [&] Amsterdam, 1724-26. £8,000 - £12,000.
    Forum, Mar. 25: Botany.- Australia.- Redouté (P.J.).- Ventenat (Étienne Pierre). Jardin de la Malmaison, 2 vol.,, Paris, 1803-04[-05]. £30,000 - £40,000.

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