• Forum Auctions
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    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: [Langland (William)]. The vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde time imprinted..., Roberte Crowley, 1550. £8,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: [Shakespeare (William)]. [Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies], second folio edition, [by Tho.Cotes, for Robert Allot], [1632]. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Bible, Czech Biblia Bohemica, first complete Bible printed in the Czech vernacular, Prague, August 1488. £30,000 to £40,000.
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    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Shabthai Tzvi.- Collection of four printed and illustrated broadsides detailing the appearance, rise and fall of the false messiah, Shabthai Tzvi, Augsburg, 1666-67. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [fourteenth century (c.1310)]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Aubrey (John). [Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme], manuscript in English, Latin and Greek, [c. 1693]. £30,000 to £50,000.
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    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Poems on Various Occasions, first edition, Harriet Maltby's copy, Newark, Printed by S. & J. Ridge, 1807. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression with dust-jacket, 1937 [but 1938]. £7,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Blake (William).- Thornton (Robert John). The Pastorals of Virgil, 2 vol., engraved plates by William Blake, 1821. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: America.- Mount (William J.) & Thomas Page. The English Pilot…, [bound with] The Fourth Book, describing The West Indies Navigation from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones, 1721. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Oldfield (Henry Ambrose), Rajman Singh Chitrakar & others. An album of 160 photographs and 13 original artworks, (1833-1919), [c. 1850s-1880s]. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Audubon (John James) [and William MacGillivray]. Ornithological Biography…, 5 vol., first edition, presentation copy inscribed by Audubon, Edinburgh, 1831-49 [i.e. 1831-39]. £10,000 to £15,000.
  • 19th Century Shop
    Catalogue 198 just published
    19th Century Shop. Darwin and Wallace, first printing of the first paper on natural selection
    19th Century Shop. Shakespeare’s Poems, first collected edition
    19th Century Shop. Walt Whitman portrait inscribed with a Leaves of Grass poem
    19th Century Shop. Major Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript notebook
    19th Century Shop. Spock's Baby Book, original MS
    19th Century Shop. Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, the great celestial atlas
  • Forum Auctions
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    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Alken (Henry). Sporting Notions, first edition, T.McLean, 1832-33. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Bardi (Lorenzo). Nuova Raccolta delle piu interessanti Vedute della Citta di Firenze…, Florence, Lorenzo Bardi, [c.1840]. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Crawfurd (John). Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava..., first edition, 1829. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions
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    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Dawe (George, engraver). The Life of a Nobleman, first edition, Geo. Henderson, [c.1825]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: [Doyle (John)], "H.B.". Political Sketches &c., 10 vol. including The Descriptive Key to H.B., Thomas McLean, [1829-51]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Eben (Adolphus Christian Frederick, Baron von) and Nicolaus Heideloff. Modèles de l'Uniforme Militaire Adopté dans l'Armée Royale de Suède, Rudolph Ackerman, 1808. £1,500 to £2,000.
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    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Geissler (J.G.G.) and Friedrich Hempel. Mahlerische Darstellungen der Sitten, Gebrauche und Lustbarkeiten bey den Russischen, Tartarischen…, 4 parts in 1, Leipzig and Paris, [1804]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Hunt (Charles). Portraits of Winning Horses...of the Derby, Oaks, & St. Leger, from the Year 1842 to 1849…, Rock Brothers & Payne, 1849. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Kunike (Adolf Friedrich). Zwey hundert und sechzig Donau-Ansichten nach dem Laufe des Donaustromes…, Vienna, Leopold Grund, 1826. £3,000 to £5,000.
    Forum Auctions
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    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Lasinio (Carlo). [Matrimony], Florence, 1790. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Reinhardt (Joseph). A Collection of Swiss Costumes, in Miniature, second English edition, James Goodwin, [1828]. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Wengen (Gottfried Durst von). Die Öffentliche Maskerade Bamberg am Fastnachts-Montage 1833…, Bamberg, [1833]. £2,000 to £3,000.
  • Sotheby’s
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Rare Book Monthly

Book Catalogue Reviews - January - 2020 Issue

Agriculture and Its Produce from Jonathan A. Hill Bookseller

Agriculture and its produce.

Jonathan A. Hill Bookseller has issued Catalogue 228, of Agriculture, Beer, Botany, Famine Relief, Farming, Food, Gardening, Horticulture, Irrigation, Land Reclamation, Utopias, & Wine. That's quite a variety, but when you think about it, it all comes down to growing things. This is a catalogue of growing crops and gardens on the land, and this is how it was done many years ago. Many of these cover the latest knowledge and developments in agriculture, but these books mostly range from a couple of centuries ago to the days before the invention of printing. There may actually be something new under the sun, but not in this catalogue. This is strictly antiquarian. These are a few selections.

 

You may think of price controls as being a fairly recent phenomenon, but they go way back. In England, one of the earliest set was placed on bread, it being a major staple of nutrition in medieval times. The regulations were first established in 1266 and continued into the 19th century. In Europe, controls were established even earlier. The rules were adjusted on occasion, but were seriously enforced to ensure an adequate bread supply. Item 12 is an edition of them published in 1626, The Assize of Bread, With sundry good and needful Ordinances for Bakers, Brewers, Inholders, Victuallers, Vintners, and Butchers; And other Assizes in Weights and Measures, which by the Laws of this Realm, are commanded to bee observed and kept by all manner of Persons, as well within Liberties as without. The title actually goes on much longer, but this will do for a start. This book was published from the 16th until the 18th century with most editions being quite rare. Hill tells us they had an unusual way of dealing with increases in the price of grain. Bakers profits were controlled, but when the price of ingredients went up, they needed an adjustment. However, they were not allowed to raise the price of bread. Instead, they were allowed to reduce the size of a loaf, and vice versa if grain prices went down. This book has tables for the weight of bread. It also has numerous woodcuts displaying the steps of baking it. Priced at $18,500.

 

Here is another item concerned with prices, but it covers a much more important staple than bread – wine. It comes from France, of course, Burgundy to be specific. It is a 17th-18th century manuscript which kept track of prices from 1622-1789. Obviously, it was kept by several generations. The heading is Taux des fruits du Baillage de Nuits depuis 1622 a 1789 a M.rs De Bays. That translates roughly to “prices of the fruits of the Bailiwick of Nights since 1622 to 1789 from Misters De Bays.” We think it must have been kept by the de Bays family and since it is written in several different hands, that it was a running report, rather than something compiled in 1789. It covers various agricultural products, notably grapes and wine, along with cereal crops and oils. The first few decades have more of the latter two, but by the second half of the 17th century, wine predominates. The beginning in 1622 may be related to that being the year of a decree forbidding wines from Lyonnaise and Beaujolais from being sold as Burgundy wines. This manuscript provides an outstanding look at agriculture in Burgundy over 170 years and the growth of its wine business. It was more of steady growth through the years in Burgundy, rather than the boom times experienced in Bordeaux, but still there were good years and bad ones, depending on wine prices and the success of the crops. Prices hit notable peaks in 1701, 1733, and 1770. Item 15. $25,000.

 

This book will help you if you are looking to purchase or lease land for your farm. The title is The Land Purchaser's Companion: and the Laws relating to Tenants and Tenures... The author was Giles Jacob. Jacob wrote in two fields, the law and literature. His legal writing was widely respected, his literary efforts not so much. He did find himself in a print battle with Alexander Pope and earned himself a place in Pope's comic epic poem, The Dunciad. This book was published at the time of the South Sea Bubble. The English had granted the South Sea Company an exclusive right to trade with South America, which sounded to many like a fantastic opportunity, but the Spanish and Portuguese, who controlled the continent, had little interest in trading with Britain. Jacob warned readers about speculative prices, saying, “on the late flourishing business in Exchange Alley, occasion'd by the great rise of the South-Sea stock, such extraordinary fortunes have been acquir'd by merchants and others, that the immediate value of lands...is considerably advanc'd, even to thirty-five or forty years purchase, near the city of London, but this cannot be expected to be a standard rule for the future, or to times in general.” I don't know whether Jacob was foreseeing what would happen to the South Sea stock or reacting to it. This book was published in 1720, the year in which that stock reached its speculative peak in August, only to lose 90% of its value by year's end. Item 45. $1,500.

 

Here is a title that might lead to a misunderstanding. Item 36 is The Reformed Husband-Man; or a Brief Treatise of the Errors, Defects, and Inconveniences of our English Husbandry... edited by Samuel Hartlib. My wife could relate to this, though she might call it the unreformed husband-man, but this book refers to the other type of husband-man and husbandry. This is husbandry as in the cultivation and raising of crops and animals. Hartlib published numerous pamphlets, this being one, comprised of letters and treatises written by others. The likely writer here was Cressy Dymock. Hartlib had a circle of friends from which he drew his works. This one concerns planting and plowing of corn, including moral advice and an exhortation to utilizing the latest developments in farming. Published in 1651. $2,500.

 

Here is another title that might lead to a misinterpretation if you don't carefully observe the spelling. Item 42 is The Description and Use of the New Invented Patent Universal Sowing Machine... by John Horn. That is “sowing” machine, not “sewing” machine. This book was self-published in 1786. Earlier in the century, Jethro Tull had invented a machine that could drill and plant certain seeds while being pulled by a horse. It was 18th century automation at its best. Horn's machine was an improvement, a machine that could drill and plant all different types of seeds. Herein Horn provides illustrations of the parts of his machine, prices, and how to order them. $2,750.

 

Item 64 is a long scroll from Japan depicting medicinal plants. It comes from the mid-Edo period, which would place it in the 18th century. The creator is unknown but was obviously a skilled artist. The illustrations are of high quality and very detailed. Descriptions are provided in Chinese characters. There was much work put into this scroll as it is about a foot high and 26 feet long. $15,000.

 

Jonathan A. Hill Bookseller may be reached at 646-827-0724 or jonathan@jonathanahill.com. The website is www.jonathanahill.com.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [RUTH, George Herman “Babe” (1895-1948)]. Signed photograph. Circa 1930s. 191 x 248 mm. $1,500 to $2,500.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HARRISON, Benjamin. Document signed (“Benj Harrison”) as governor of Virginia, certifying the service of Daniel Cumbo, a Black Revolutionary soldier. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: ONE OF THE FIRST PRINTED ANNOUNCEMENTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
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    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: FIRST PRINTING OF LINCOLN’S IMMORTAL GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HIGHLY IMPORTANT MORMON ARCHIVE. ALLEY, George. Archive of 23 Autograph Letters Signed by Mormon Convert George Alley to His Brother Joseph Alley. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [AVIATION]. [ARMSTRONG, Neil A.] Aviation Hall of Fame Gold Medal MS64 NGC, Awarded to Neil Armstrong in 1979. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
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    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: NEWLY DISCOVERED FIRST PRINTING OF "WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE... " FROM THE ONLY NEWSPAPER ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL PROCESSION. $4,000 to $8,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: THE MOST IMPORTANT GEORGE WASHINGTON DOCUMENT IN PRIVATE HANDS; GEORGE WASHINGTON’S COMMISSION AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF, 1775, ONE OF ONLY TWO ORIGINALS. $150,000 to $250,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: A VERY RARE ACCOUNT OF BLACKBEARD’S DEATH AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PIRATE ITEMS EXTANT. $3,000 to $5,000.
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    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: EDISON, Thomas. Patent for Edison’s Improvements on the Electric-Light, No. 219,628. [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Patent Office], 16 September 1879. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [VIETNAM WAR]. The original pen used by Secretary of State William P. Rogers to sign the Vietnam Peace Agreement, Paris, 27 January 1973. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: SONS OF LIBERTY FOUNDER COLONEL BARRÉ ANNOTATED TITLE-PAGE, “WHICH OUGHT TO ROUSE UP BRITISH ATTENTION”. $4,000 to $6,000.
  • Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG BEADED JUDICIAL COLLAR. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A COMPLETE RUN OF VISIONAIRE MAGAZINE THROUGH 2010. $6,000 - $9,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: LAW REVIEW OFFPRINT SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG. $3,000 - $5,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: META REBNER'S WORKING SCRIPT OF THE LOVED ONE. $1,500 - $2,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A KATHY GROVE PORTRAIT OF CYNDI LAUPER FOR THE FEBRUARY 1989 DETAILS COVER. $800 - $1,200
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A PLASTIC COAT BY MILLIE DAVID FEATURED IN SOHO NEWS STYLE SECTION, FROM THE COLLECTION OF ANNIE FLANDERS. $500 - $700
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG JEWELRY BOX. $600 - $900
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A SET OF JONI MITCHELL LYRICS FOR "IF I HAD A HEART." $2,000 - $3,000

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