Rare Book Monthly

Articles - July - 2021 Issue

A Nation: A City, & Its First Library: the St. Louis Mercantile Library

Libraries represent bundles of ambitions, many initially modest, always beginning with the hope to make a difference in people’s lives.  This is why tens of thousands of volunteers commit their time and imaginations to make their community institutions significant.  While there are over 200,000 libraries worldwide their scale of ambitions range from simply providing tables and chairs, and books on the shelves, all the way to building and preserving historic collections that convey the deeper stories that connect the past to the future we experience today.

 

There is no one best way to do this but, given the United States’ regions and complex history, significant perspectives can best be elaborated by major regional collecting institutions.  St. Louis is fortunate to have one:  the St. Louis Mercantile Library.

 

This year the Mercantile is celebrating 175 years of service to their community and region and recently released a large quarto [9” x 12”] 255 page full color history of the St. Louis region providing both the story of the library as well as a tour through the collections they have built over these many years.  It turns out the Mercantile has been on a tear over 17 decades, determined to be a major repository of the primary sources and documents for the deep Midwest.

 

Collectors can particularly appreciate this story because they regularly experience the complex decision making involved in pursing material for their own collections and can only imagine the thousands of decisions that were necessary to build a major collecting institution.  Collectors’ ambitions, more often than not, flame out after a decade or two.  For an institution to collect over parts of 3 centuries has meant to stay committed through the Civil War, social upheaval, though World Wars, not to mention structural changes.

 

Beyond gifts, the principal sources were initially local offers from dealers and opportunities at auctions that in time opened into broader possibilities as regional communications and access increased.  Success as a collecting institution then required higher standards of cataloguing leading into the modern structuring of library records.

 

Today they live in the emerging world of the 5G internet we experience that merges what we see, saw, heard and read into an information blur we absorb at the speed of light.  To succeed over 175 years the potential to fail has been constant, even unrelenting.  Such success is rare and must be appreciated.  Congratulations!  The future will be in your debt.

 

For the progress over the past 3 decades a significant share of the credit must accrue to John Neal Hoover, their Executive Director, as leader of the library during the current period as the very definition and  concept of what an uber important collecting library can and should become has been transforming in the embrace of social media as Internet connectivity has broadened access and personalized the experience. Thirty years ago the gold standard for collecting libraries was to accumulate and secure the important rare materials.  To that obligation today the leading libraries embrace the goals of sharing and interpreting in imaginative ways.  If twenty years ago, the college major as librarian was a declining specialty, the possibilities of innovative librarianship today suggest the careers of innovative programmers for the leading libraries beckon.

 

To those trying to understand what the Mercantile provides it’s necessary to experience the many forms they provide; rare books, maps, newspapers, photographs, manuscripts, archives, oral histories and motion pictures to name some.  To appreciate their range, their anniversary volume captures both the scale and spirit of the enterprise.

 

To experience this range the time-honored way has always been to come in person and, given that their collections are partially accessible electronically, you can approach the institution with a click.  But that said, to feel the depth of the collections page by page the volume effectively provides sequenced examples that make the clear statement this library is in the full embrace of the newest technologies.

 

Whether a collector or a St. Louis partisan or simply interested to see what the future of the past looks like consider adding a copy of “A Nation, A City, & Its First Library” to your own library.  It will alter your view.

 

If you would like to purchase one of the 500 copies of this remarkable story here’s a link –

 

https://www.umsl.edu/mercantile/membership-and-giving/gift-shop.html

Rare Book Monthly

  • Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Johnson (C.). A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most Notorious Pyrates, 1724. £3,000-4,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Ordonez de Cevallos (Pedro). Viage del Mundo, 1st edition, Madrid: Luis Sanchez, 1614. £1,000-1,500
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: North America. Merian (Matthaus), Virginia..., 1627 or later. £1,500-2,500
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: World. Waldseemuller (Martin), Tabula Nova Totius Orbis, Vienne: 1541. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Erasmus (Desiderius). The ... paraphrase of Erasmus... 2 volumes, 1st edition, 1549. £3,000-5,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Bible [English]. [The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament, 1562]. £3,000-5,000
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Smith (Lucy). Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, 1st edition, 1853. £1,000-1,500
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Derain (Andre). Pantagruel, signed limited edition, Albert Skira, 1943. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Austen (Jane). Pride and Prejudice, illustrated by Hugh Thomson, Large Paper edition, 1894. £1,500-2,000
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Ellison (Ralph). Invisible Man, 1st edition, New York: Random House, 1952. £200-300
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Taschen Collector's Edition. Annie Leibovitz, limited edition, 2014. £1,000-1,500
  • Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
  • Bonhams, Apr. 8: First report outside of the colonies of the American Revolution, from American accounts. Printed broadsheet, The London Evening-Post, May 30, 1775. $20,000 - $30,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce, James. The earliest typescript pages from Finnegans Wake ever to appear at auction, annotated by Joyce, 1923. $30,000 - $50,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce's Ulysses, 1923, one of only seven copies known, printed to replace copies destroyed in customs. $10,000 - $15,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: ATHANASIUS KIRCHER'S COPY, INSCRIBED. Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell' Accademia del Cimento, 1667. $2,000 - $3,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Bernoulli's Ars conjectandi, 1713. "... first significant book on probability theory." $15,000 - $25,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Aristotle's Politica. Oeconomica. 1469. The first printed work on political economy. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: John Graunt's Natural and political observations...., 1662. The first printed work of epidemiology and demographics. $20,000 - $30,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: William Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas, 1786. The first work to pictorially represent information in graphics. $15,000 - $25,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Anson's A Voyage Round the World, 1748. THE J.R. ABBEY-LORD WARDINGTON COPY, BOUND BY JOHN BRINDLEY. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: La Perouse's Voyage de La Perouse autour du monde..., 1797. LARGE FINE COPY IN ORIGINAL BOARDS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Francesca Woodman's Some Disordered Interior Geometries, 1981. Untrimmed publisher's proof sheets. $4,000 - $6,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Charles Schulz original 8-panel Peanuts Sunday comic strip, 1992, pen and ink over pencil, featuring Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Lucy as a psychiatrist. $20,000 - $30,000

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