Rare Book Monthly

Articles - July - 2013 Issue

Say it ain't so

An entertaining read - available from the author

An entertaining read - available from the author

Recently Mike Stillman wrote a story about a manuscript and book theft from the 1970’s that was solved with the admission of a person long associated with the Lambeth Palace Library that they had stolen from their archives.  Conscience ultimately won out and the library learned that perhaps as many as ten times as many books were taken as had previously been identified as missing – some 1,400 items altogether.  The material was recovered when the thief disclosed through his attorney after his death that Lambeth material was hidden in his attic.  It’s a happy if unsettling ending and an easily ignored indication of an immense problem, the theft of books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera that is overwhelmingly an un and under-reported crime.

A year ago he wrote about the Girolamini thefts, books found to have been taken by Massimo de Caro, director of the Girolamini Library in Naples.  Fifteen hundred books were initially reported missing and recently that number increased to 4,000.  For Mr. De Caro the important number is now 7 as in 7 years.  That is 2,556 days in jail books.

Theft is the often third step in a book’s history.  The first I’ll buy it and the second “it’s around here somewhere.”  But of course it's not.  It’s on to its next life a la The Bookman’s Tale [see the May issue of AE Monthly for a review].

The problem is that unusual examples are often difficult to understand and tend to share shelves with nice but less important material that in time mutes their significance and obscures their value.  In some institutions such materials are well identified and separated by value, the most important materials behind screens and locked doors.  But not all and it's at the margins that important material tends to be vulnerable, particularly if those stealing are themselves the trusted insiders.

The Lambert Palace experience illustrates that important books can slip through the cracks, particularly when the thief is someone working in the building with access through security, to the material and the cataloguing.  In such circumstances things can disappear; from the shelves and from the catalogue.  Two things saved the Lambeth from extraordinary losses, the library’s bookmarks that kept a presumed large portion of the stolen material from being disposed and in death, the thief’s decision to return what he could not cash.  In this case the story has a happy ending more or less.

But such thefts are common and most stories do not have happy endings.  For collectors  - age, declining eyesight and mental acuity may encourage “borrowing” as was the case with material in Frank Siebert’s collection in the late 1990s.  Some material is still on loan.

But surely such thefts are uncommon if not absolutely rare.  Yes?  No.  For the intrepid, the ones willing to be informed, one can always run a search for ‘book theft.’ On Google the 43,500 results will keep you up at night for months if not years.  Wikipedia chimes in with a page on library theft, reporting some of the recent major cases and the fact that English libraries experience theft at the rate of 5.3% whatever that means.
  

And in Oklahoma a textbook salesman is currently accused of diverting $2.8 million of text material from the John Wiley Company and reselling in on the Internet.  The material apparently is not old but the crime is.  When the first collector saw a copy of the Gutenberg and said “I’ll take it” we can’t be sure what he meant.
                                                                                          

The number of reported crimes in recent years has been rising.  David Slade, past president of the ABA in the United Kingdom, was caught lifting material from the Rothschild collection, confessed and was sentenced to prison.

E. Forbes Smiley, a established dealer, resolved the issue of missing volumes by simply excising maps.  He too was sent to prison, as was Denning McTague who while interning at the NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration, was arrested for theft and subsequently sentenced to 15 months.

Theft is apparently common and of course has a history.

In an interesting well-researched book by Jeremy M. Norman I recently read I can see that it’s not a new problem.  His book, Scientist, Scholar & Scoundrel, is a bibliographical investigation of the “Life and Exploits of Count Gugliemo Libri,” an Italian polymath who in the 19th century played chess when his opponents, the stock and gate keepers of many of the great libraries, played checkers and he picked their pockets clean; he the brilliant, well-placed and influential expert on rare and important manuscripts and they, the frequently ignorant and unaware.  He had quite a life, in his most active years living in France moving from Paris to London in 1848 into the warm embrace of they who did not care for the French and therefore refused to believe the charges of document theft stacked up in the Parisian courts like garbage on New York City’s sometimes strikebound streets.  The French, who would come to hate him, ensured that the English, who in that era held the French in contempt, would embrace the hated as, if not a hero, a wronged party.

In the 1840’s and for two decades to follow, the principal acquirer of Mr. Libri’s fenced properties was English Lord Ashburnham whose purchases in many cases would later find their way back to France and Italy, acquired by and on behalf of the robbed, to reunite the dispersed parts with the collections once looted.

How Mr. Libri could succeed in his life of crime arises from his unique capabilities and the era in which he lived, the final four decades before library records and official documentation would begin to become the science it is today.  In his era only a small group of scholars could read the ancient texts and few consistent records were kept.  It was in fact, to read Mr. Norman’s account, easy to steal.
  

That such criminality continues today is established, thus suggesting that more remains to be done.  We can not or should not trust, this the now pungent lingering odor that will hover over visitors and researchers for years to come because a few could not be trusted and it’s a shame.  The world of rare books, manuscripts, maps and ephemera thrives in the atmosphere of trust and is limited and damaged by distrust.  So it turns out what Libri and his many later imitators have taken was more valuable than documents and books, it was our trust.   “I had no idea” is not a defense and neither is it an excuse.  Those who control must be vigilant and those trusted to see, touch and turn must be worthy of the privilege.

In hell there should be a place from which to hang those that steal our confidence and trust.  Such people exist in every generation.  They who steal the printed word should have their own gallery.  And now, if someone will lend me their cigarette lighter …

Scientist, Scholar & Scoundrel by Jeremy M. Norman.  Available on his website – www.historyofscience.com and on Amazon.  It’s an interesting story and very well organized.

Jeremy Norman
Historyofscience.com
Historyofinformation.com
Novato, California
415-892-3181

Writer's Note:  Correction:  An earlier version of this article said that E. Forbes Smiley had been a member of the ABAA.  That is incorrect.  He has never been a member.


Posted On: 2013-07-22 00:00
User Name: wallyj

I believe that special place in hell for thieves is Circle 8, Bolgia 7. That is a ditch of evil within the circle where they are in in an endless cyc


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  • Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Lucianus Samosatensis. Dialogoi, editio princeps, second issue, Florence, Laurentius Francisci de Alopa, 1496. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Boccaccio (Giovanni). Il Decamerone, Florence, Philippo di Giunta, 1516. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Henry VII (King) & Philip the Fair (Duke of Burgundy). [Intercursus Magnus], [Commercial and Political Treaty between Henry VII and Philip Duke of Burgundy], manuscript copy in Latin, original vellum, 1499. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bible, English. The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New, Robert Barker, 1613. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bond (Michael). A Bear Called Paddington, first edition, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1958. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Yeats (William Butler). The Secret Rose, first edition, with extensive autograph corrections, additions and amendments by the author for a new edition, 1897. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bound in dark green morocco elaborately tooled in gilt and with 3 watercolours to fore-edge, by Fazakerley of Liverpool, 1841. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Miró (Juan), Wassily Kandinsky, John Buckland-Wright, Stanley William Hayter and others.- Spender (Stephen). Fraternity, one of 101 copies, with signed engravings by 9 artists. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Sowerby (George Brettingham). Album comprising 22 leaves of original watercolour drawings of fossil remains of Cheltenham and Vicinity, [c.1840]. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Mathematics.- Blue paper copy.- Euclid. De gli Elementi, Urbino, Appresso Domenico Frisolino, 1575. £12,000 to £18,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern
    Now through July 10, 2025
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Book of Hours by the Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht, Use of Sarum, in Latin, Southern Netherlands (Bruges), c.1450. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Albert Einstein. Autograph letter signed, to Attilio Palatino, on his research into General Relativity, 12 May 1929. £12,000 to £18,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: John Gould. The Birds of Europe, [1832-] 1837, 5 volumes, contemporary half morocco, subscriber’s copy. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Sotheby’s
    Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern
    Now through July 10, 2025
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Ian Fleming. A collection of James Bond first editions, 8 volumes in all. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 1997, first edition, hardback issue. £50,000 to £70,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.R.R. Tolkien. Autograph letter signed, to Amy Ronald, on Pauline Baynes's map of Middle Earth, 1970. £7,000 to £10,000.
  • Rare Book Hub is now mobile-friendly!
  • DOYLE
    Rare Books, Autographs & Maps
    July 23, 2025
    DOYLE, July 23: WALL, BERNHARDT. Greenwich Village. Types, Tenements & Temples. Estimate $300-500
    DOYLE, July 23: STOKES, I. N. PHELPS. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915-28. Estimate: $3,000-5,000
    DOYLE, July 23: [AUTOGRAPH - US PRESIDENT]FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. A signed photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Estimate $500-800
    DOYLE, July 23: [ARION PRESS]. ABBOTT, EDWIN A. Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. San Francisco, 1980. Estimate $2,000-3,000.
    DOYLE, July 23: TOLSTOY, LYOF N. and NATHAN HASKELL DOLE, translator. Anna Karénina ... in eight parts. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., [1886]. Estimate: $400-600
    DOYLE, July 23: ROWLING, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. Estimate $1,200-1,800
  • Freeman’s | Hindman
    Western Manuscripts and Miniatures
    July 8, 2025
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FRANCESCO PETRARCH (b. Arezzo, 20 July 1304; d. Arqua Petrarca, 19 July 1374). $20,000-30,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF THE VITAE IMPERATORUM (active Milan, 1431-1459). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF ATTAVANTE DEGLI ATTAVANTI (GABRIELLO DI VANTE) (active Florence, c. 1452-c. 1520/25). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FOLLOWER OF HERMAN SCHEERE (active London, c. 1405-1425). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. An exceptionally rare, illuminated music leaf from a Mozarabic Antiphonal with sister leaves mostly in museum collections. $11,500-14,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Exceptional leaf from a prestigious Antiphonary by a leading illuminator of the late Duecento. $11,500-14,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF MS REID 33 and SELWERD ABBEY SCRIPTORIUM (AGNES MARTINI?) (active The Netherlands, Groningen, c. 1468-1510). $10,000-15,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Previously unknown illumination from one of the most renowned Gothic Choir Book sets of the Middle Ages. $6,000-8,000.

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