• Finarte, Nov 20-21: Alighieri, Dante - La Commedia, [col commento di Jacopo della Lana e Martino Paolo Nidobeato, curata da Martino Paolo Nidobeato e Guido da Terzago. Aggiunto Il Credo], 1478
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Alighieri, Dante - La Commedia [Commento di Christophorus Landinus, edita da Piero da Figino. Aggiunte le Rime diverse; Marsilius Ficinius, Ad Dantem gratulatio], 1491
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Lactantius, Lucius Coelius Firmianus - Opera, 1465
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Alighieri, Dante - Le terze rime di Dante, 1502
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Boccaccio, Giovanni - Il Decamerone. Di messer Giouanni Boccaccio, 1516
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Giordano Bruno - Candelaio comedia del Bruno nolano achademico di nulla achademia; detto il fastidito. In tristitia hilaris: in hilaritate tristis, 1582
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Petrarca, Francesco - Le cose volgari di Messer Francesco Petrarcha, 1504
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Legatura - Manoscritto - Medici - Cosimo III de' Medici / Solari, Giuseppe - I Ritratti Medicei overo Glorie e Grandezze della sempre sereniss. Casa Medici..., 1678
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Alighieri, Dante - La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri con varie annotazioni, e copiosi Rami adornata, 1757
    Finarte, Nov 20-21: Lot containing 80 printed guides and publications dedicated to travel and itineraries in Italy
  • Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 51. Ortelius' Influential Map of the New World - Second Plate in Full Contemporary Color (1579) Est. $5,500 - $6,500
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 165. Reduced-Size Edition of Jefferys/Mead Map with Revolutionary War Updates (1776) Est. $4,750 - $6,000
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 688. Blaeu's Superb Carte-a-Figures Map of Africa (1634) Est. $3,000 - $3,750
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 105. Striking Map of French Colonial Possessions (1720) Est. $2,750 - $3,500
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 98. Rare First Edition of the First Published Plan of a Settlement in North America (1556) Est. $3,000 - $3,750
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 181. Important Map of the Georgia Colony (1748) Est. $2,750 - $3,500
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 547. Ortelius' Map of Russia with a Vignette of Ivan the Terrible in Full Contemporary Color (1579) Est. $1,400 - $1,700
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 85. Homann's Decorative Map of Colonial America (1720) Est. $1,600 - $1,900
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 642. Blaeu's Magnificent Carte-a-Figures Map of Asia (1634) Est. $3,000 - $3,750
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 748. The Martyrdom of St. John in Contemporary Hand Color with Gilt Highlights (1520) Est. $1,000 - $1,300
    Old World Auctions (Nov 6-20):
    Lot 298. Scarce Early Map of Chester County (1822) Est. $2,750 - $3,500
  • Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    H. Schedel, Liber chronicarum, 1493. Est: € 25,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    P. O. Runge, Farben-Kugel, 1810. Est: € 8,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    W. Kandinsky, Klänge, 1913. Est: € 20,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    W. Burley, De vita et moribus philosophorum, 1473. Est: € 4,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    M. B. Valentini, Viridarium reformatum seu regnum vegetabile, 1719. Est: € 12,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    PAN, 10 volumes, 1895-1900. Est: € 15,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    J. de Gaddesden, Rosa anglica practica medicinae, 1492. Est: € 12,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    M. Merian, Todten-Tanz, 1649. Est: € 5,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    D. Hammett, Red harvest, 1929. Est: € 11,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    Book of hours, Horae B. M. V., 1503. Est: € 9,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    J. Miller, Illustratio systematis sexualis Linneai, 1792. Est: € 8,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    F. Hundertwasser, Regentag – Look at it on a rainy day, 1972. Est: € 8,000
  • Sotheby's
    Fine Books, Manuscripts & More
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s: J.R.R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. 11,135 USD
    Sotheby’s: Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven and Other Poems, 1845. 33,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Leo Tolstoy, Clara Bow. War and Peace, 1886. 22,500 USD
    Sotheby’s: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1902. 7,500 USD
    Sotheby’s: F. Scott Fitzgerald. This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, and Others, 1920-1941. 24,180 USD

Rare Book Monthly

Articles - November - 2014 Issue

Blessed Mr. TIGER, or the Pilier Littéraire

The corner of Rue de la Huchette and Rue du Petit-Pont in Paris (where Tiger's shop once stood).

The corner of Rue de la Huchette and Rue du Petit-Pont in Paris (where Tiger's shop once stood).

At the turn of the 19th century, when printing went through major changes, one bookseller made a name for himself by publishing dozens of popular titles. Simple, short and of lower quality, they met the needs of the time, and thus became successful. Meet Mr Tiger, owner of the famous Pilier Littéraire, located at 10 rue du Petit-Pont, in Paris!

 

I went to Paris the other day, in the Latin Quarter. I reached rue du Petit-Pont, one of the oldest streets of the capital, and then I walked up to the corner of Rue de la Huchette. Here it was... well, here it once was—the small and dark workshop of Christophe-César-Jean-Baptiste Tiger (1759-1825), the famous Pilier Littéraire. It used to stand at number 10, according to the title pages of my books, “at the bottom of rue Saint-Jacques”. But things have changed, and number 10 stands far from the corner of rue de la Huchette—so which of the two corners was the right one? I entered the jewellery store on the right, but the young saleswoman had no idea what I meant by “long ago”. Nobody in the café on the left could help me either, and I couldn’t follow the indications left by Cordelier Delano any further—in 1834, he paid a tribute to the Pilier Littéraire in Le Diable Boiteux à Paris (Stuttgart): “When you enter rue Saint-Jacques, close to the Petit-Pont, you find a huge shop of novelties at the corner of rue de la Huchette. There used to stand the honourable workshop of Mr Tiger, the Pilier Littéraire, the sanctified ground where, from ancient times, were created the double almanac of Liège, the almanac of Paris, of Rouen, and the popular stories of Cartouche and Mandrin.”

 

These popular books that suddenly flooded the market at the turn of the 19th century became known as peddling books. Printed in a small format (in-18°) and huge quantities on a mediocre paper, they were usually illustrated with an engraved frontispiece, and they were the cornerstones of Mr Tiger’s empire of paper. We don’t know much about Mr Tiger, except that he started in 1786 as a master binder in Paris—he was then based on Place Cambrai. He published his first books at the same time, and claimed to decorate and look after private book collections, and to make covers for every kind of almanac. The French revolution of 1789 abolished all constraints on book printing, and Mr Tiger seized the opportunity. “He established himself as a printer-bookseller as well as a printer of steel engravings,” states the French National Library, “he was also doing type foundry.” He wasn’t the only opportunist at the time, as the amount of booksellers doubled between 1780 and 1800 in Paris.

 

Almanacs

 

Mr Tiger specialized in almanacs, annual publications that, apart from a regular calendar, featured various pieces of work such as recipes, riddles or songs. They became the most printed and the most read books of the time, just after the Bible. Cordelier Delanoue had a lot of respect for almanacs—and the people who printed them: “Not far from the former shop of the Pilier Littéraire,” he went on, “we can still see a small and smoky shop, with an almost unreadable old sign: Aux Associés, Demoraine & Thébaud, booksellers. Specialized in almanacs of all kinds, religious, hymns and prayer books. Blessed are these offices! Blessed is Mr Tiger! Blessed is Mr Demoraine! Here, in those mysterious laboratories, the moms and kids of the community, and the nuns (...) come to buy their prayer books, their calendars and their songbooks. (...) Ô Demoraine! Ô Tiger! Duet of athletes! Duet of elders! Eternal joy of small bookshops, and of the Petit-Pont! Your shop, dark and shadowy as it is, shines brighter than all the golden panels of the vain bookshops of the Palais-Royal.” In fact, Delanoue seems to be speaking of the same shop, as the widow Demoraine was the “successor of the famous Tiger of the Pilier Littéraire.” (Emile Morige, 1834). The same Emile Morige stated that she was then printing 180,000 copies a year of the Parisian Astrologue almanac!

 

The early Tiger editions—before 1800—are hard to spot. We know that he moved to the Collège des Cholets in 1797, before settling at rue du Mont-Hilaire in 1798; then he went to rue Etienne-des-Grès in 1799, came back to Place Cambrai in 1800, to eventually open his bookshop rue du Petit-Pont, n°10, “at the corner of la Huchette, at the bottom of rue Saint-Jacques”, as written on the title pages. By then, his productions become more frequent.

 

He obtained his licence of bookseller in 1812, but was denied the one of printer in 1811—we know that he complained to the Minister of Justice in April 1811. The free market applied to books had generated too much confusion (and maybe too many pamphlets?) and Napoleon decided to put an end to it in February 1810. To obtain their licence, booksellers had to go through a police investigation, and prove their good morals as well as their loyalty to their country. Anyway, Mr Tiger kept on selling books until he went bankrupt in 1811. But he wasn’t out of business and was certified bookseller again on September 11, 1818. When he died in Paris on April 30, 1825, his licence apparently went to his widow, then to Alexandre-François Selligue, an engineer from Geneva who, in 1829, recorded a patent for a typographic press with a continuous movement, “that can print on both sides, and works with a steam engine.” (Revue Encyclopédique,1821).

 

Tiger’s Plutarchs

 

Nobody really knows Mr Tiger or the Pilier Littéraire nowadays. After a prosperous period, peddling books were replaced by serialized novels around 1850, and were disregarded as worthless readings. Mr Tiger published short, attractive and efficient books—in a word, profitable. He needed to sell books, so he focused on simple topics. He talked about popular heroes such as Mandrin or Cartouche, he related well-known tragedies (the shipwreck of La Méduse), or contemporary stories (such as the Napoleonic wars). He was an opportunist, who published an ode to Napoleon in 1806, and then The Corsican bandit, or crimes, forfeits and sins of Nicolas Bonaparte, in 1816. In the former, Napoleon is “a God from the mount Olympus”; in the latter, “a man who, thanks to his boldness, his hypocrisy, his forfeits and crimes, has sat on the highest throne of Europe.” As a matter of fact, most of his books were anonymous; even his almanac of Liège, the heart of his empire, was a counterfeit publication of what M. Froment called “the true almanac of Liège printed by Madam Bourguignon,” and which “wasn’t officially distributed in France where it only entered surreptitiously.”(La Police dévoilée depuis la Restauration, 1829).

 

The same M. Froment reported a curious story involving Mr Tiger. The printer was sitting with one Sieur Henriquez one day, drinking wine at the corner of rue des Saints-Augustins, “talking about the articles they would insert in the next edition of the almanac”, when they saw some turkeys led by a butcher walking on the sidewalk. One of the turkeys was walking very proudly, and Mr Tiger laughed: “This General shall soon lose its life in the middle of its soldiers...” Henriquez, wrote Froment, “noted that this would be a very appropriate article for the almanac.” When the publication came out, a policeman read between the lines, and foretold “the assassination of a General and more than that, a provocation!” Mr Tiger was denounced, and summoned to the police station where a police officer heard him, smiled, and then “politely let him go.

 

Mr Tiger was a successful printer, but his books became a cliché. As soon as 1829, the Memoires de Vidocq made an ironical reference to them: “It became clear for the Magistrates that (this) incident (...) was an invention of my agents; so many fancies, more or less bizarre, have been built up around it; and the Plutarchs of the Pilier Littéraire won’t fail to acknowledge them as truthful, if the idea ever comes to the printer Tiger, or to his successor, to add a title to his collection of peddling books: The admirable yet true history, of facts and memorable, extraordinary or surprising adventures of the famous Vidocq; with the portrait of this famous informer.” Tiger’s books somewhat symbolize the impoverishment of printed materials at the time. Nonetheless, certain titles still attract book collectors. Those about Napoleon are very valuable to those who try to know how the emperor was perceived in his own time, for example. And others like the History of Saint-Domingue, or the portraits of the French buccaneers, have become very rare, and quite expensive. Even the almanacs have become quite rare. I have listed the titles of his catalogue that I’ve come across lately. Some are for sale on the Internet right now, and I’ve mentioned their price after the description. Here is a part of what the Pilier Littéraire left to the world. 

Rare Book Monthly

  • Doyle, Dec. 6: An extensive archive of Raymond Chandler’s unpublished drafts of fantasy stories. $60,000 to $80,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: RAND, AYN. Single page from Ayn Rand’s handwritten first draft of her influential final novel Atlas Shrugged. $30,000 to $50,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: Ernest Hemingway’s first book with interesting provenance. Three Stories & Ten Poems. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: Hemingway’s second book, one of 170 copies. In Our Time. $15,000 to $25,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: A finely colored example of Visscher’s double hemisphere world map, with a figured border. $12,000 to $18,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: Raymond Chandler’s Olivetti Studio 44 Typewriter. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: Antonio Ordóñez's “Suit of Lights” owned by Ernest Hemingway. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: A remarkable Truman archive featuring an inscribed beam from the White House construction. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: The fourth edition of Audubon’s The Birds of America. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: The original typed manuscript for Chandler’s only opera. The Princess and the Pedlar: An Entirely Original Comic Opera. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: A splendidly illustrated treatise on ancient Peru and its Incan civilization. $7,000 to $10,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: A superb copy of Claude Lorrain’s Liber Veritatis from Longleat House. $5,000 to $8,000.
  • Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 37: Archive of the pioneering woman artist Arrah Lee Gaul, most 1911-59. $3,000 to $4,000.
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 66: Letter describing the dropping water level at Owens Lake near Death Valley, long before it was drained, Keeler, CA, 26 July 1904. $3,000 to $4,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 102: To Horse, To Horse! My All for a Horse! The Washington Cavalry, illustrated Civil War broadside, Philadelphia, 1862. $4,000 to $6,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 135: Album of cyanotype views of the Florida panhandle and beyond, 224 photographs, 174 of them cyanotypes, Apalachicola, FL and elsewhere, circa 1895-1896. $1,200 to $1,800
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 154: Catalogue of the Library of the United States, as acquired from Thomas Jefferson, Washington, 1815. $15,000 to $25,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 173: New Englands First Fruits, featuring the first description of Harvard in print, London, 1643. $40,000 to $60,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 177: John P. Greene, Original manuscript diary of a mission to western New York with Joseph Smith, 1833. $60,000 to $90,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 243: P.E. Larson, photographer, Such is Life in the Far West: Early Morning Call in a Gambling Hall, Goldfield, NV, circa 1906. $2,500 to $3,500
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 261: Fred W. Sladen, Diaries of a WWII colonel commanding troops from Morocco to Italy to France, 1942-44. $3,000 to $4,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 309: Los mexicanos pintados por si mismos, por varios autores, a Mexican plate book. Mexico, 1854-1855. $2,000 to $3,000
    Swann, Nov. 21: Lot 8: Diaries of a prospector / trapper in the remote Alaska wilderness, 5 manuscript volumes. Alaska, 1917-64. $1,500 to $2,500.
  • Doyle, Dec. 5: Minas Avetisian (1928-1975). Rest, 1973. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (1876-1973). Yawning Tiger, conceived 1917. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Robert M. Kulicke (1924-2007). Full-Blown Red and White Roses in a Glass Vase, 1982. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). L’ATELIER DE CANNES (Bloch 794; Mourlot 279). The cover for Ces Peintres Nos Amis, vol. II. $1,000 to $1,500.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: LeRoy Neiman (1921-2012). THE BEACH AT CANNES, 1979. $1,200 to $1,800.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Richard Avendon, the suite of eleven signed portraits from the Avedon/Paris portfolio. $150,000 to $250,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989). Flowers in Vase, 1985. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Edward Weston (1886-1958). Nude, 1936. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Edward Weston (1886-1958). Juniper, High Sierra, 1937.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Steven J. Levn (b. 1964). Plumage II, 2011. $6,000 to $8,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Steven Meisel (b. 1954). Madonna, Miami, (from Sex), 1992. $6,000 to $9,000.
  • Gonnelli:
    Auction 55
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    November 26st 2024
    Gonnelli: Stefano Della Bella, 23 animal plances,1641. Starting price 480€
    Gonnelli: Stefano Della Bella, Boar Hunt, 1654. Starting price 180€
    Gonnelli: Crispijn Van de Passe, The seven Arts, 1637. Starting price 600€
    Gonnelli: Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, La Maschera è cagion di molti mali, 1688. Starting price 320€
    Gonnelli: Biribissor’s game, 1804-15. Starting price 2800€
    Gonnelli: Nicolas II de Larmessin, Habitats,1700. Starting price 320€
    Gonnelli: Miniature “O”, 1400. Starting price 1800€
    Gonnelli: Jan Van der Straet, Hunt scenes, 1596. Starting Price 140€
    Gonnelli: Massimino Baseggio, Costantinople, 1787. Starting price 480€
    Gonnelli: Kawanabe Kyosai, Erotic scene lighten up by a candle, 1860. Starting price 380€
    Gonnelli: Duck shaped dropper, 1670. Starting price 800€

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