Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - February - 2004 Issue
Heritage Book Shop’s California<br>Book Fair 2004 Catalogue
Mountain Goats from Audubon’s Quadrupeds of North America.
By Michael Stillman
The Heritage Book Shop issued a catalogue for the recent California International Antiquarian Book Fair in Los Angeles. You’re likely to meet all kinds of collectors at a book fair, so not surprisingly, this catalogue has books for everyone. From Georgius Agricola to Gioseffo Zarlino, from incunabula to Dr. Seuss, it’s all here, 378 items in all.
John James Audubon is primarily remembered for his “Birds of America,” but he also published (with John Bachman) a three-volume set on four-legged critters. The three volumes (first Octavo) of The Quadrupeds of North America were published in 1849, 1851, and 1854. The quality of the illustrations is up to what you would expect from Audubon. Item 7. $16,500.
While Audubon was studying wildlife in America, Alexis de Tocqueville was studying domestic life. His De la democratie en Amerique (Democracy in America) may be the most famous work ever about America. Item 344 consists of the first edition of volumes I and II, the second of volumes III and IV, and has a presentation inscription from de Tocqueville. $75,000. Item 345 is a set of all first editions but without the inscription. $37,500.
If this is too new for your collection, the Heritage Book Shop has a couple of books from 1470s. It was a very good decade. Item 8 is a 1473 Lauingen imprint of St. Augustine’s De consensus evangelistarum (Harmony of the Gospels). $25,000. Item 189 is the Augsburg 1470 printing of Flavius Josephus’ De antiquitate Judaica (Jewish Antquities) and De bello Judaico (Jewish War). $110,000. Still not old enough? Item 25 is a leaf, just one, from a Gutenberg Bible. Printed in Mainz in 1455 you won’t find anything older in print. $37,500.
You would expect incunabula to be highly valued, but here’s a book whose author would have been shocked to see his work’s price less than a century after it was released. Item 48 is Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. This is the 1914 first edition of the first Tarzan book, and it comes with the extremely rare color dust jacket. $65,000.
