Rare Book Monthly Articles - April - 2022 Issue

The Book Fairs Arrive in New York!

The Book Fairs Arrive in New York!

The New York Antiquarian Book Fair returns to the Armory in New York City April 21-24 and the world is taking a collective deep breath as Covid-19 is moving on.  The address is 643 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10065. The ABAA is a show organization and the New York Book Fair has been suspended for two years.  For collectors, dealers and librarians, the chance to participate at the world’s greatest book fair is a heady moment of reverie.  Is the worst behind us?  We all hope so.   As has been previously, it is a 4 day event, Thursday afternoon opening, continuing Friday, Saturday and Su...

Contrary to Popular Belief, There Are Young Women Collectors, and the Honey & Wax Collecting Prize for Young Women is Now Open for Entries

Contrary to Popular Belief, There Are Young Women Collectors, and the Honey & Wax Collecting Prize for Young Women is Now Open for Entries

The sixth annual Honey Wax Book Collecting Prize is open for applications from U.S. women collectors age 30 and under. Say what? Who is going to apply? Everyone knows book collectors are old men. ...

Happy Days Are Here Again for Florida Book Lovers

Happy Days Are Here Again for Florida Book Lovers

Yes! Happy Days Are Here Again for Florida Book Lovers. After a weary pandemic hiatus, the 39th Florida Antiquarian Book Fair will welcome a joyful crowd of bibliophiles to the Coliseum, St. Peters...

A Glimpse of the Kislak Collecting Magic:  At Auction 4/26

A Glimpse of the Kislak Collecting Magic: At Auction 4/26

Jay Kislak’s name is familiar to the vast majority of readers of Rare Book Monthly, but thanks to “Exploring the Early Americas,” the ongoing exhibition at the Library of Congress of selections fro...

William P. Barlow:  A Grace Note

William P. Barlow: A Grace Note

William, Bill, Barlow the exceptional collector passed away in October, 2021 while in the midst of lending his archives of various old auction house sales to us.   During 2021 he lent and we conver...

What Are They Building in There?: Bonhams in March

What Are They Building in There?: Bonhams in March

This March, within ten days of each other, Bonhams Auctioneers announced the acquisition of two auction houses, Skinner in the US (https://www.bonhams.com/press_release/34061/) and Bruun Rasmussen ...

Handwritten Book of Poems by 13-Year-Old Charlotte Bronte Revealed by Booksellers James Cummins and Maggs Bros.

Handwritten Book of Poems by 13-Year-Old Charlotte Bronte Revealed by Booksellers James Cummins and Maggs Bros.

Booksellers James Cummins of New York and Maggs Bros. of London have come up with one of the more significant literary finds in recent memory. It is a hand-written miniature volume by Charlotte Bro...

A Library Opens As Usual But No One Is There

A Library Opens As Usual But No One Is There

The main library in Christchurch, New Zealand, opened as usual the other day. There's nothing unusual about that except it wasn't a usual day. It was a holiday, Waitangi Day* to be exact. It wasn't...

Francisco Lopez de Gomara, or the Certain Curse of an Uncertain Translation

Francisco Lopez de Gomara, or the Certain Curse of an Uncertain Translation

One of the best books on the conquest of the New World, Francisco Lopez de Gomara’s Historia general de las Indias (1552), raised controversy when it came out in France in 1569—mainly because the F...

Revisiting the Durants in the 21st Century:  Story of Civilization Gets a 2nd Life on YouTube

Revisiting the Durants in the 21st Century: Story of Civilization Gets a 2nd Life on YouTube

Anyone who grew up in a moderately literate household during the mid-20th century could count on finding Will and Ariel Durant's The Story of Civilization on the family bookshelf. The 11 volume his...

Selections from Maurice Sendak’s Personal Collection Sold to Benefit the Rosenbach

Selections from Maurice Sendak’s Personal Collection Sold to Benefit the Rosenbach

Christie’s New York is pleased to announce the sale of selections from artist and author Maurice Sendak’s personal library in its upcoming Fine Printed Books Manuscripts Including Americana auctio...

An Exceptional Collection of Black Americana:  Sold!!

An Exceptional Collection of Black Americana: Sold!!

Promptly at 2:00 pm EST in New York on Tuesday 15 March, 2022 Guernseys sold the most complex lot we have had the pleasure to contemplate in many years:  The Elizabeth Meaders Collection tracing th...

Amazon to Close All Their Bookstores

Amazon to Close All Their Bookstores

Amazon.com has put a lot of retail stores out of business. Now it looks like it has done the same to its own. Before it became the behemoth seller of everything under the sun, Amazon was an online ...

Book of Books:  How many trees must die for this thing to exist?

Book of Books: How many trees must die for this thing to exist?

Many people hope to have a book in them.    A few do.  Those who have experienced their lives through the words, stories and experiences of books seem the most likely to succeed.  One such effort w...

A Century Later, the Endurance, the Ship of “South, the Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition,” Has Been Found

A Century Later, the Endurance, the Ship of “South, the Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition,” Has Been Found

This story is something of a follow up on an event described in the polar exploration classic South, the Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition 1914-1917, a century ago. Polar exploration was the la...

A Pokemon Card Sells for Over $300,000. What Does This Mean?

A Pokemon Card Sells for Over $300,000. What Does This Mean?

Another spectacular price for a collectible card was achieved at Heritage Auctions last month. It wasn't another multi-million dollar sports card, the price being a “modest” $336,000. However, this...

Eight New Catalogues Reviewed This month

Eight New Catalogues Reviewed This month

This month we are reviewing eight new bookseller catalogues. Ursus Rare Books is celebrating its 50th anniversary with 50 very special books. Jonathan A. Hill Bookseller features science, medicine,...

Rare Book Monthly

  • Swann, May 15: Lot 4: Helena Bochoráková-Dittrichová, Z Mého Detství Drevoryty, Prague: Obzina, 1929. First trade edition, signed by the artist. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 10: Nancy Cunard, Negro Anthology, with a tipped-in A.L.S. to Karl Marx's niece, 1934. First edition. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 14: Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 1845. First edition. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 17: Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, inscribed first edition, 1959. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 28: Margaret Hill Morris, Private Journal Kept during a Portion of the Revolutionary War, for the Amusement of a Sister, 1836. First edition. $3,000 to $4,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 38: Anna Sewell, Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse, 1877. First edition. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 43: Gertrude Stein, Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia, signed presentation copy with photograph of Stein, 1912. First edition. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 48: Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, first edition in the scarce dust jacket, 1927. $6,000 to $8,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 54: Katherine Dunham, large archive of material from her attorney, 1951-53. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 55: Margaret Fuller Signed Autograph Letter, New York City, 1846. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 92: Sonia Delaunay, illus. & Tristan Tzara, Juste Present, deluxe edition with original gouache, 1961. $20,000 to $25,000.
    Swann, May 15: Lot 93: Flor Garduño, The Sonnets of Shakespeare, 2006. Limited edition. $6,000 to $8,000.
  • Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
  • Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli: Pietro Aquila, Psyche and Proserpina,1690. Starting price 140€
    Gonnelli: Jacques Gamelin, Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris, 1779. Starting price 300€
    Gonnelli: Giorgio Ghisi, The final Judgement, 1680. Starting price 480€
    Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli Goya y Lucientes Francisco, Los Proverbios.1877. Starting price 1000 €
    Gonnelli: Domenico Peruzzini, Long bearded old man, 1660. Starting price 2200€
    Gonnelli: Enea Vico, Leda and the Swan,1542. Starting price 140€
    Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli: Andrea Del Sarto [school of], San Giovanni Battista, 1570. Starting price 25000€
    Gonnelli: Carlo Maratta, Virgin Mary and Jesus, 1660. Starting Price 1200€
    Gonnelli: Louis Brion de La Tour, Sphére de Copernic Sphere de Ptolemée / Le Systême de Ptolemée. Le Systême de Ticho-Brahe…, 1766. Starting price 180€
    Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli: Marc’Antonio Dal Re, Ville di Delizia o Siano Palaggi Camparecci nello Stato di Milano Divise in Sei Tomi Con espressevi le Piante…, Tomo Primo, 1726. Starting price 7000€
    Gonnelli: Katsushika Hokusai, Bird on a branch, 1843. Starting price 100€
  • Dominic Winter Auctioneers
    May 14
    Printed Books & Maps, Travel, Atlases & Exploration
    Dominic Winter, May 14: (Choiseul-Gouffier, Marie). Voyage Pittoresque de la Grece, 2 vols, 1st edition, 1782-1822. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter, May 14: Gentlemen's Magazine and Historical Chronicle, by Sylvanus Urban, 11 volumes. £700-1,000
    Dominic Winter, May 14: Shackleton (Ernest). The Heart of the Antarctic, 2 vols, 1st ed, presentation copy, 1909. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers
    May 14
    Printed Books & Maps, Travel, Atlases & Exploration
    Dominic Winter, May 14: Drayton (Michael). Poly Olbion..., London: 1622. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter, May 14: Scheuchzer (Johann Jacob). Ouresiphoites Helveticus, 4 parts in 1, 2nd ed, 1723. £3,000-4,000
    Dominic Winter, May 14: Roberts (Henry, after). Chart of the NW Coast of America and NE Coast of Asia ..., [1784]. £500-800
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers
    May 14
    Printed Books & Maps, Travel, Atlases & Exploration
    Dominic Winter, May 14: World. Maffei (Giovanni), Indiarum orientalium Occidentaliumque Descriptio..., 1589. £1,200-1,500
    Dominic Winter, May 14: World. Ortelius (Abraham), Typus Orbis Terrarum, [1598]. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter, May 14: Bible [English]. [The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New..., 1613]. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers
    May 14
    Printed Books & Maps, Travel, Atlases & Exploration
    Dominic Winter, May 14: Taylor (John). All the Workes of John Taylor the Water-Poet..., 1630. £1,000-1,500
    Dominic Winter, May 14: Pierpont Morgan Collection. Catalogue of the Morgan Collection of Chinese Porcelains, 1904 & 1906. £2,000-3,000

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