The Sheffield Star reports that the library of the late Paul Betts will be sold at Bonham's in London on 27 March. Betts, an advertising executive, began collecting in his late teens, and, said his son "Such was the strength of this interest he was still adding to his collection almost up to his death, despite the fact that ill health had by then deprived him of the power even to hold his new acquisitions. He had no rigid collecting policy, preferring to buy whatever caught his eye whenever he saw and could afford it."
Looks like there will be some exciting items among the nearly 400 lots, including a 1495 Wynkyn de Worde printing of Higden's Universal History (Polichronicon) and a five-volume collection of travel accounts published 1625-6 by Samuel Purchas (the inheritor of Richard Hakluyt's materials, interestingly). Both of these are expected to fetch as much as £30,000.
