Auction Report: Recent Sales and May Preview

Just in case we biblio-folk needed some perspective: last night's sale of "The Scream" for $119.9 million was more than the totals realized over all the book auctions in 2011 for both Christie's and Sotheby's combined.

Before we get to May, some April sale notes:

- Doyle New York sold Rare Books, Autographs, and Maps on 23 April. The surprise top seller was a group of manuscript leaves, which fetched $86,500 over estimates of $2,000-3,000. was The first octavo edition of Audubon's Birds of America sold for $56,250.

- At Christie's Travel, Science and Natural History on 25 April, the total realized was £1,031,500. The 1794 W. & S. Jones orrery fetched £32,450, while the ~1705/15 German pocket globe sold for £18,750. The top lot was an Augustin Brunias oil painting, which made £87,650.

- The top lot at PBA Galleries' 26 April sale of Fine Americana, Travel & Exploration, and Cartography was a copy of the very rare American Bond Detector (1869), which sold for $5,700.

- Results for Bloomsbury's 27 April Bibliophile Sale are here.

And now, May:

- Today at Bloomsbury, the Angling Collection of George Miskin, in 704 lots.

- At Sotheby's on 9 May, Travel, Atlases, Maps, & Natural History, in 212 lots. Top estimate goes to Linnaeus Tripe's Views of Burma, 120 albumen prints (£150,000-200,000).

- On 10 May, PBA Galleries will sell the Library of Michael Killigrew desTombe, in 233 lots. The top-estimated lot is John Dee's Monas hieroglyphica (1564), estimated at $50,000-80,000.

- Christie's Paris on 11 May has Importants Livres Anciens, Livres d'artiste et Manuscrits, in 227 lots. The top estimate goes to a ~1490 Tuscan Mahzor (est. 400,000-600,000 EUR).

- Bloomsbury sells Important Books and Manuscripts on 15 May, in 372 lots.

- At Swann on 15 May, Early Printed, Scientific, Medical, and Travel Books, in 400 lots. Lots include a Hebrew Bible signed by Increase Mather.

- Also on 15 May, Livres et Manuscrits at Sotheby's Paris, in 184 lots. A group of Guillaume Apollinaire letters rates the top estimate, at 150,000-250,000 EUR.

- At Christie's New York on 18 May, Important Printed Books and Americana from the Albert H. Small Collection, in 151 lots. Highlights include copies of the Second, Third, and Fourth Folios, a first edition of Audubon's Quadrupeds with great provenance, a first octavo of Audubon's Birds in the original wrappers, and a Kelmscott Chaucer, among other fantastic lots.

- Another angling library: Bonhams sells the Angling Library of Alan Jarvis on 22 May, in 489 lots.

- A neat one at Bonhams on 23 May: the Stuart B. Schimmel Forgery Collection, in 253 lots. They're all here: Chatterton, Ireland, Ossian, Forman, Wise ... I wish this one was in New York and not London, but I suppose it's probably a good thing I can't go! I'll have a more detailed rundown of this one as we get closer to the date.

- No previews yet for the following: PBA Galleries Fine Literature & Books in All Fields on 24 May; Music and Continental Books & Manuscripts at Sotheby's on 29 May.

The Mather Library (Now With Collections!)

I've added collections to the LibraryThing catalog of the Mather Family Library, so it's possible to more easily see the breakdown of where the books are now (those that we know of, anyway). Not surprisingly the AAS leads the way with 1,482 known titles; the MHS follows well behind with 94, and then there are a smattering of others (Harvard with 60, Yale with 27, the Huntington with 13, &c. &c.).

I also added collections for the books Cotton Mather purchased as duplicates from the Harvard College library in 1682 (some of which are now back there), and for those books we know came out of the Thomas Shepard libraries.

Of course these numbers will change as we're able to confirm more locations, which I hope to be able to do. There are 95 titles I have as "Present Location Unknown," so if you can help me decrease that number, I'll be eternally grateful (I'm sure some of these are now in institutional collections).

What I've Been Up To

This week's been a busy one of playing catch-up, which is why I've been posting so rarely. Among other things, I've been adding some more books to the Mather Family Library in LT. Some of those were the books now owned by Harvard which had belonged to various Mathers; the rest were about 100 titles purchased by Cotton Mather in 1682 when Harvard was getting rid of some duplicates from its library. I'll say this for him, Cotton was a pretty savvy book-buyer at age 19. A bit precocious, too; in 1683 he wrote that he had "A Library exceeding any man's, in all this Land" (which was probably true, to be fair).

Adding the titles proved somewhat labor-intensive since I was trying to make sure they weren't already in the catalog (which they were if the copies still exist - some of them are at the American Antiquarian Society, and some of them have gone back to Harvard).

There's still much information about the Mather libraries to add, so that will be an ongoing project. I've also received some new and very interesting library lists from various early American political figures, so look for those additions on the horizon. I think the library of Elbridge Gerry will be up next, and I'll start on that this weekend.

And, as our friend from BiblioHistoria notes in comments below, the Legacy Libraries have gotten some exciting coverage in this month's rare book magazines: there is a feature profile of the project by Jonathan Shipley in Fine Books & Collections, and I just discovered tonight that there is a News & Views piece on the effort in Rare Book Review as well! And I'm delighted to see that this blog makes Bruce Tice's list of rare book blogs ... I'm flattered to be in such good company there.

The Mathers are Finished!

I have at long last completed cataloging the known portions of the Mather Family Library at LibraryThing. This turned into one of those projects that once begun was rather more expansive than it first appeared, so it took longer than I expected to finish, but I think it came out well in the end.

The library contains copies of books owned by several members of the Mather family, from patriarch Richard to Increase and Cotton (at left), their cousins and nephews, sons, daughters and grandsons (the notorious Boston loyalist minister Mather Byles) and several other relations. The books are now widely scattered, although the majority of them are currently housed at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA. The MHS and BPL also hold portions of the collection.

Many if not most of the books contain ownership inscriptions, which are noted for those where either the old bibliography (from 1910) or the current library records contain them. The copies at MHS have been examined personally and verified, but the others I haven't physically looked at yet.

Not surprisingly, the Mathers don't share many titles with modern readers (or at least LT-users, I'm sure there's somebody out there with a few obscure 17th century religious pamphlets). Those they do share are ones you might expect: Machiavelli's The Prince, Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, Ovid, Descartes, Plutarch, &c. No Shakespeare for this lot, of course.

This is the first time (so far as I know) that the entire known collection of the Mathers (there may be a few more scattered titles out there - if anyone knows of such, please let me know) has been compiled in one place: the 1910 bibliography did not include a large portion of those held at AAS; those are included here, and all records have been updated to the extent possible.

An interesting look, I think, at the bookshelves of the most important early New England divines.

Hemingway, F. Scott, and Smithson

I've posted over at the LibraryThing blog to announce the completion of three more Legacy Libraries: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Smithson. Hemingway's is the largest Legacy collection so far (7,411 books, entered by several users in just three months).

I worked on the Smithson collection, which was great fun, and have also still been busy adding bits to John Adams' library. More transcriptions of JA's marginalia and author notes are still to come; I think they make fascinating additions to the collection, and I'm very happy that we're able to highlight the author mentions and make the transcriptions available.

I'm going to spend the next little while finishing up the Mather Family library, since that's been languishing a bit. Then onto the next!

Pen is Mightier?

In cataloging tracts from a volume in the Mather Library I came across some interesting verses printed on the last page of Ludlow no lyar, or, A detection of Dr. Hollingworth's disingenuity in his second defence of King Charles I. and a further vindication of the Parliament of the 3d of Novemb. 1640 (Amsterdam: 1692), attributed to Slingsby Bethel. The tract defends Edmund Ludlow, one of the judges of Charles I who signed the king's execution warrant. The very page is available digitally (from a later edition of documents) here.

The two verses below are transcribed exactly as they appear in the pamphlet. The first, in Latin, is most of an epigram by Martial (it's missing two lines, and some of the words are a little off).

Allatres licet usque nos & usque,
Et gannitibus improbis lacessas;
Ignotus pereas Miser, Necesse est.
Non deerunt tamen hac in
Urbe forsan Unus, vel duo, tresue, quatuorve,
Pellem rodere qui velint Caninam;
Nos hac a scabie tenemus ungues.

One translation of this epigram (Book Five, Epigram LX, in its correct form) runs: "You may attack me as much as you like, but I will not give you the immortality you crave by recording your existence in my verse. Others may be willing to soil their fingers with you, but I keep my hands off such carrion." Several other translations here.

The second verse, written around 1677, is a reply by Sir Carr Scroope to John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and is titled 'Answer by way of epigram.'

Rail on, poor feeble Scribler, speak of me,
In as base Terms as the World speaks of thee;
Sit swelling in thy Hole like a vex'd Toad,
And full of Malice spit thy spleen abroad;
Thou canst blast no man's Fame with thy ill word,
Thy pen is just as harmless as thy Sword.

(Slight) LT Changes & Updates

Tim's unveiled a new Great Seal of LibraryThing: it's based on the Great Seal of the United States, and includes the mottoes "Annuit Pittaciis" (He approves our tags) and "Novus Ordo Librorum" (A new order of books).

Also, to separate the living LT Authors from the dead, the libraries we've been entering will now get an "LT Legacy" badge on their profile page (see Jefferson's here). The number of those libraries, by the way, continues to climb. Beyond Jefferson's, you can now browse the book collections of:

Danilo Kis (poet and translator)
Tupac Shakur
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Isabella Stewart Gardner
Sylvia Plath
Marie Antoinette
Susan B. Anthony
Alfred Deakin (the second Prime Minister of Australia)

Of those, the only one I don't share any books with is Mozart.

Many others are currently underway, and I've got some even more interesting possibilities waiting in the wings which I hope to get underway soon.

My own current project is the Mather Family Libraries, a large collection (now widely dispersed) accumulated by several generations of the Mather family. We have about sixty of the titles here at MHS, so for the first time I've been able to actually see the books I'm adding to LT (verifying the signatures, finding new and different inscriptions, notes and so forth). When you get to hold the very book in your hand that was once read by Cotton Mather, it makes projects like this even more interesting and exciting than they already are. This collection has a pretty interesting and complicated history, which I've condensed greatly and posted here.

The fun continues!

Cotton Mather in the Library

The following is a slightly-edited version of "Chasing Cotton Mather," which recently appeared in the in-house newsletter of the Massachusetts Historical Society. I share it here for others interested in bibliographic delights.

The MHS library staff recently received one of the most interesting interlibrary loan requests we’ve had in quite some time; on behalf of a patron, another library was seeking a copy of Cotton Mather’s Heavenly considerations; or the joy of heaven over them that answer the call of heaven, a sermon printed at Boston in 1706. WorldCat lists MHS as having the only copy, which is catalogued in ABIGAIL. Our natural first step for an early American imprint such as this is to check the Evans fiche and digital databases, but they did not contain this title (and the print version of Evans’ bibliography offers only the title and an imprint: “Boston: Printed by B. Green, 1706”). The English Short-Title Catalogue also contained no information about the sermon, so we turned to Thomas James Holmes’ bibliography of Cotton Mather’s works. Imagine our surprise at reading Holmes’ entry, which begins: “No copy of this work has survived to our time.”

Holmes reports that the title of the sermon was taken from Samuel Mather’s list of his father Cotton’s writings, and that he used the imprint assigned by Evans for his bibliographic entry. Holmes did discover that Cotton Mather had mentioned the work in his diary on 11 July, 1706; the entry there reads: “About this time, to give a further Stroke unto the Intentions of promoting early Piety, having preached a Sermon on a Lord’s-Day to my Great Congregation, with an Appendix to it, unto a great Meeting of young People assembled on the Lord’s-day Evening. The Discourse was desired by the young People, who published it. It is entituled; Heavenly Considerations. The Joy of Heaven over them that answer the Call of Heaven, or, Powerful and Wonderful Motives to Repentance and Early Piety; fetch’d from the Joy of Heaven over every Repenting Sinner on Earth.”

In the book-world, there are records of many printed works of which no copy is known to exist (think of the famous Oath of a Freeman, the first document printed in North America). According to Holmes, Heavenly Considerations was one of these lost biblio-souls. But if so, what was catalogued under that title in ABIGAIL? What was quietly residing inside a white envelope in Box 1706? Our curiosities piqued by the thrill of the hunt, a colleague and I hurried up to the stacks, where we confirmed that Heavenly Considerations is lost no more.

The tiny book hardly gives off a good first impression. Just 16 centimeters tall, in duodecimo format, containing a mere fifty-six pages, the sermon is stab-bound in nothing more than a piece of green paper. Printed as it was on thin, inexpensive paper stock, it’s a wonder that even this one copy of Heavenly Considerations survived to see its tercentenary. The sermon is severely water-stained and has suffered significant damage to the bottom corners of the first several leaves. Its title page is missing, but it can be identified by the caption title on the first extant page (signature A2), “Sinners Repenting and Heaven Rejoycing,” and by a dedicatory line: “To my YOUNG PEOPLE.” The pamphlet was priced cheaply at 7 shillings, 5 pence, and the date 1706 appears immediately preceding the text.

Evans assigned the printing of Heavenly Considerations to B. Green, the Bartholomew Green who ran a print shop on Boston’s Washington Street near the Old South Church. However, an advertisement printed on the recto of the final leaf reveals that it was in fact Bartholomew’s nephew Timothy who produced Heavenly Considerations. Timothy, who had apprenticed with his uncle (and was the son and grandson of Samuel Green Sr. and Jr., also early Cambridge and Boston printers), opened his own shop on Middle Street (now Hanover Street) in the North End in 1700. Both Bartholomew and Timothy printed other works for Mather in 1706, but a comparison of Heavenly Considerations with the layout and typography of those additional works shows that Timothy was responsible for Heavenly Considerations. In fact, Timothy even claims credit outright: when examining another of his 1706 Mather imprints - the second edition of The Religion of the Closet - I happened upon the advertisement there, which reads “There is now a Printing, and will shortly to be sold, by Timothy Green, at the North of Boston, a very Encouraging Small Book, to Repentance and Early Piety: Entituled Sinners Repenting, and, Heaven Rejoycing.…”

We have been unable to discover much about how MHS’ copy of Heavenly Considerations passed its time before coming to us, but we know that it was presented to the Society with some other Mather works around 1960 by its former owner, Benjamin Tighe. His name appears in pencil on the wrapper opposite the first page of text. The final, blank leaf is also signed by one John Clap, who wrote there (several times) “John Clap his book 1712.”

So, from a simple interlibrary loan request, we not only “re-discovered” a hidden gem in our collection, but we’ve also been able to clear up some longstanding bibliographic mysteries about the format and production of Heavenly Considerations. Our senior cataloger has added some additional notes to the ABIGAIL record, including the mention of the text in Mather’s diary, to reflect these discoveries. And what of that interlibrary loan request? We were glad to be able to provide digital photographs of the text to the other library’s patron.

We hope to be able to make a full digital version of Heavenly Considerations available fairly soon, and if/when that happens I'll certainly share it with you all.

New Common-place Released

The July issue of Common-place (the best history e-journal out there) is now available. It includes features on the house Ben Franklin rented with he stayed in London, and on the loyalist daughters of Boston's Rev. Mather Byles, a conversation with historian Peter Mancall (whose book Hakluyt's Promise I enjoyed very much), and much more.

There's also a nice review of the Massachusetts Historical Society website; it's always nice to see the place you work get praise!

Early Printed Books Profiled

The Republican has an interesting profile story today on the rare books collections at several Massachusetts institutions, playfully headlined "Valley home to ancient tomes." The focus is largely on the earliest printed books that have found homes in college and university rare books collections: Smith College's 1467 copy of St. Augustine's "De Vita Beata"; Amherst's 1471 "Suetonius Vitae XII Caesarum" (a biography of Julius Caesar); and Mount Holyoke's 1471 copy of Valla's Latin grammar.

Early books of New England importance also are mentioned, including Amherst's 1684 edition of an Increase Mather essay on supernatural happenings and the Springfield Library Association's copy (one of four) of William Pynchon's "The Meritorious Price of our Redemption" (printed in London in 1650, but burned en masse in Boston).

Of course the article wanders toward monetary value, but then meanders back around to security questions, mentioning the Smiley case. Most importantly (and apparently surprisingly to the author) is that the books are made accessible. She quotes Martin Antonetti, curator of rare books at Smith College: "We're not trying to keep people away from the books. In fact, we want people to have contact with these objects from the past. What other artifacts from the 15th century can people hold and handle? To me, that is part of the excitement of these objects. They are so rich and the experience of handling them can be so emotional."

Exactly. And that, of course, is their true cultural worth.