• 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 - April - 2015 Issue

Cayenne, The Dry Guillotine

One of the most fearful periods in French history was probably the aftermath of the Revolution of 1789. Men had become political wolves, cutting each other’s throats over ideas or interests—enemy of the Republic one day, executioner the morrow, no one was safe. The Jacobins and Robespierre plunged the country into the Terror in 1793—that’s when blood had no time to dry on the restless guillotine—, and then the Directoire took over. In the middle of this new and bubbling Republic, some remained faithful to the King, and organized the resistance. When caught, they were shortened at the widow (or guillotine); others were deported to Cayenne, in French Guyana. In 1798, after a failed royalist coup, 193 of them were shipped to this cursed land. Three of them wrote their stories: Ange-Louis Pitou (Voyage à Cayenne, dans les deux Amériques et chez les Anthropophages—Paris, 1805), Jean-Jacques Aymé (Déportation et Naufrage de J.J Aymé, Ex-Législateur—Paris, 1800) and Jean-Pierre Ramel (Journal de l’Adjujant-Général RAMEL, l’un des déportés à la Guyane...—Londres, 1799). Let’s explore the triumvirate of the books of deportees.

 

 

PART ONE: Louis-Ange Pitou, Hell’s Angel.

 

The Bastille was taken on July 14th, 1789. Louis-Ange Pitou arrived in Paris three months later, infatuated with the revolutionary ideas of the time. He had no money, knew no one but he was young and had ambitions; as well as a good education. The story goes that he witnessed a terrible scene on his very first day in Paris: a crowd carrying the severed head of an innocent baker! Pitou was so horrified that he turned royalist. From that day on, he started to plot against the Republic, joining dozens of illegal newsletters, becoming a spy and an agitator. His pleasant manners soon earned him many acquaintances—he even met a grateful Queen Marie-Antoinette at one point. Now a National Guard, he started to attend many assemblies of Sans-Culottes (name of the revolutionaries) as an undercover agent. His brother, who was fighting with the Royalists in Vendée (West of France), needed arms. Thus, Pitou smuggled 300,000 francs worth of weapons and ammunitions during the summer of 1793! - a perilous activity, that soon cost the life of his brother. Pitou, who lived many lives in one, then became a chansonnier, or street singer; behind the church of Saint-Germain, he stood up on a table and sang songs of protest in front of a numerous and agitated audience; as a result, he became a jailbird. Everyday the water runs to the well, and after the failed royalist coup of Fructidor 18th, (September 4th, 1797*) the bottom dropped out; Pitou was sentenced to deportation to Cayenne alongside a few criminals, a handful of harmless non-juring priests and many royalist conspirators such as Jean-Pierre Ramel, Pichegru or Tronçon-Ducoutray. As a traitor and a conspirator, Louis-Ange Pitou deserved death; but he bribed a few officials, and saved his head—only to end up in hell, Cayenne (French Guyana).

 

 

Field of ambition, slaughterhouse of deportees

 

Since 1795, it had become fashionable to send political prisoners to Cayenne—it was a sure way to get rid of them for quite a long time, if not forever, while pretending to be magnanimous; you didn’t spill the blood of your enemies, did you? But as Tronçon-Ducoudray, who met his death in Cayenne, put it: French Guyana was nothing but a dry guillotine—and it remained active until the 1940s. “This land where we find ourselves,” writes Pitou, “has always been, since discovered, the field of ambition, the retreat of the outlaws, the graveyard of the Africans and the slaughterhouse of the Europeans banned from their country.” This is an extract from his famous Voyage à Cayenne... (1805). As the two other books aforementioned, it is considered as a travel book. The first edition came out in 1805, in two in-octavo volumes illustrated with two folding plates—the government allegedly seized a first manuscript of the relation before printing, circa 1800. Though described as “of little literary interest” by Philippe Descoux in an article about Louis-Ange Pitou published in Les Contemporains (1901), the book was successful. When reprinted in 1807, it wasn’t to be found At the author’s anymore, but At Pitou’s, Bookseller. Indeed, thanks to the benefits generated by the first edition, he had established himself as a bookseller in Paris, and started to print his old songs; but he soon went bankrupt. Nowadays, this is a sought-after book, which won’t go for less than a few hundreds of euros, though usually modestly bound—this tough economical period was poor in magnificent bindings, mainly for that type of books. Some of his digressions might be slightly boring, but there are not so many, and as soon as he comes back to his personal testimony, his book gets fascinating. Arrested in Paris, he was sent to the prison of Bicêtre: “I was thrown among the worst villains ever, who robbed me of everything, up to my shirt (...), telling me I’d better keep quiet if I didn’t want to get murdered that night. I shut up, but cried at will.” His book takes us into the belly of the beast; at one point, he’s given a shirt with a hole: “The shirt belonged to one of the poor victims murdered here two years before (the famous massacre of 1792, as he apparently mixes up his first encounters with the law and his final condemnation); the hole had been made by the sword that had been driven into his stomach!” Thrown into a cell full of lepers, he writes: “Some worms as thick as my finger fell from the living corpses above me, who were up to four on the same mattress.” Transferred to the Conciergerie, he stayed there long enough to catch a glimpse at a scary chest, “where they had stocked the hair of the victims put to death the previous day**.” And this was just the beginning!

 

* The revolutionists adopted a new calendar. Year 1 started on September 22nd, 1792. A worthy piece of information regarding old books, as many of the publishers of the time adopted the so-called “new style” on their title pages—hence the numerous mentions of An V de la République (Year 5 of the Republic), An III, etc.

 

** The executioner cut the hair of the victims so that the blade of the guillotine would meet as little resistance as possible. 

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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