Rare Book Monthly Articles - September - 2023 Issue

Safeguarding History:  A life with paper by Kenneth W. Rendell

Safeguarding History: A life with paper by Kenneth W. Rendell

Worlds apart:  books, maps, manuscripts and ephemera   Kenneth Rendell, now 80, a life-long collector-dealer in collectibles, has written an immensely interesting account of his life in our field.  This book, his ninth, is being released October 3rd, 2023 and can be pre-ordered on Amazon and elsewhere.   When kids find their imaginations soaring about old books and paper, they inevitably daydream about discovering gems and subsequently share their prizes with luminaries, collectors and institutions.  In the human imagination, possibilities live.  Children have long been drawn into the m...

Where Do AI Programs Get Their Data? It Turns Out Some Comes from Copyrighted Books, Without Permission

Where Do AI Programs Get Their Data? It Turns Out Some Comes from Copyrighted Books, Without Permission

Where does the information you get from artificial intelligence (AI) sources like ChatGPT come from? It comes from a lot places, including the reams of data on the internet, but a significant sourc...

The “Bouquinistes” of Paris and the Green Pandora’s Boxes

The “Bouquinistes” of Paris and the Green Pandora’s Boxes

The city of Paris will welcome the Olympic games in 2024. As the opening ceremony on the Seine River approaches, the officials plan to remove the emblematic booksellers’ wooden boxes from the pictu...

An Open Letter to the Rare Book Hub-Rare Book Monthly Community on behalf of Rare Book School

An Open Letter to the Rare Book Hub-Rare Book Monthly Community on behalf of Rare Book School

I am grateful to Bruce McKinney for providing access to this forum to give his subscribers a little bit of information about Rare Book School at the University of Virginia.   To the extent you re...

Tom Verlaine's Massive Book Collection Being Sold

Tom Verlaine's Massive Book Collection Being Sold

Some people collect books based on subjects or time periods. Others collect more on the basis of quality. And then, there are people who collect in quantity, a type of collecting that generally req...

Rare Book Hub:  at 21

Rare Book Hub: at 21

It has been an extraordinary privilege to play a part in the growth and development of the market for collectible paper over these past 21 years.  A field that has been resolutely transitioning ove...

Bemelmans' Mock-up of Madeline from Kislak Collection brings $190,500 at July Sotheby’s Auction

Bemelmans' Mock-up of Madeline from Kislak Collection brings $190,500 at July Sotheby’s Auction

A 46-page mock up of children’s classic Madeline by artist-illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans created ca. 1938-39 brought $190,500 (including the buyer’s premium) in a July auction at Sotheby’s, substant...

Dominic Winter Auctioneers to auction Christopher Foley Library from Beeleigh Abbey

Dominic Winter Auctioneers to auction Christopher Foley Library from Beeleigh Abbey

10,000 books and other items from theLibrary of the late Christopher Foyle of Beeleigh Abbey in Essex will be auctioned by Dominic Winter Auctioneers of Cirencester in two sales in September 2023 a...

Owen Gingerich, Known for His Obsessive Pursuit of One Book, has Died at Age 93

Owen Gingerich, Known for His Obsessive Pursuit of One Book, has Died at Age 93

Professor, astronomer, sleuth and author Owen Gingerich died earlier this year at the age of 93. Gingerich will long be remembered for his obsessive pursuit of knowledge about one particular book, ...

First time items at Old World Auctions' September sale

First time items at Old World Auctions' September sale

Old World Auctions’ September sale features several items that have never before been offered at auction. The online auction runs through 10 p.m. Eastern on September 13. The first of these rare i...

Fourth Stolen Columbus Letter Returned to Italian Library

Fourth Stolen Columbus Letter Returned to Italian Library

Sometime between 1985 and 1988, a copy of the most important document of the New World disappeared from the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (Marciana or St. Mark's National Library) in Venice, Italy....

Fake Books – A Popular Alternative to the Real Thing

Fake Books – A Popular Alternative to the Real Thing

We have some good news and some bad news. Fake books have evidently become quite popular today, sufficiently so that several companies now are making and selling them. This fits in with the trend o...

Robert Caro - Slow Writing Takes Time:  Big Bios on Robert Moses & LBJ Explore Getting & Using Power

Robert Caro - Slow Writing Takes Time: Big Bios on Robert Moses & LBJ Explore Getting & Using Power

I’m one of the legion of Robert Caro fans. Caro, now 87, is the former Newsday reporter, who made a lifetime project writing about the acquisition and perpetuation of power using biographies of Rob...

Swann Announces New Specialists for Illustration Art &  LGBTQ+ Art, Material Culture & History Departments

Swann Announces New Specialists for Illustration Art & LGBTQ+ Art, Material Culture & History Departments

New York—The start of the fall 2023 season at Swann Galleries brings two new specialists for the house: Corey Serrant joins Swann as the associate director of LGBTQ+ Art, Material Culture History,...

Who Printed America's First Currency? Benjamin Franklin, of course, but How Did He Stop Counterfeiters?

Who Printed America's First Currency? Benjamin Franklin, of course, but How Did He Stop Counterfeiters?

This website is all about printed paper, yet we rarely discuss the most valuable printed paper of all – currency. It is the only type of paper with a stated value. If you were asked to name an inge...

Three New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

Three New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

For September we review three new booksellers catalogues. Maggs Bros. Ltd. features voyages travel, and some more too. Michael D. Heaston Rare Books and Manuscripts offers a selection of Americana...

Rare Book Monthly

  • 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…
  • Rare Book Hub is now mobile-friendly!
  • 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. 12: Hooke, Robert. Micrographia: or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses. London: James Allestry for the Royal Society, 1667. $12,000 to $15,000.
    Sotheby’s, Dec. 12: Chappuzeau, Samuel. The history of jewels, first edition in English. London: T.N. for Hobart Kemp, 1671. $12,000 to $18,000.
    Sotheby’s, Dec. 12: Sowerby, James. Exotic Mineralogy, containing his most realistic mineral depictions, London: Benjamin Meredith, 1811, Arding and Merrett, 1817. $5,000 to $7,000.

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