• <b><center>Dominic Winter Auctioneers<br>September 27<br>The Library of the Late Christopher Foyle of Beeleigh Abbey: Part One</b>
    <b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Bible, Dominican Use, in Latin. Illuminated manuscript on vellum, [France: probably Paris, c. 1240]. £10,000-15,000
    <b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Book of Hours, <i>in French with Latin cues.</i> Illuminated manuscript on vellum [France, Normandy, early(?) 15th century]. £10,000-15,000.
    <b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Book of Hours, <i>Use of Rouen, in Latin and French.</i> Illuminated manuscript on vellum, [France: Rouen, c. 1480]. £30,000-40,000
    <b><center>Dominic Winter Auctioneers<br>September 27<br>The Library of the Late Christopher Foyle of Beeleigh Abbey: Part One</b>
    <b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Mary I (1516-1558). <i>Queen of England, 1553-1558.</i> Letter signed, ‘Marye the Quene’, Greenwich, 7 January 1558. £15,000-20,000
    <b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Jonson (Ben). Works, 1st collected edition, 3 volumes, 1640. £7,000-10,000
    <b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Essex. A sammelband of 27 English Civil War pamphlets mostly relating to the siege of Colchester, Essex, 1648. £5,000-8,000
    <b><center>Dominic Winter Auctioneers<br>September 27<br>The Library of the Late Christopher Foyle of Beeleigh Abbey: Part One</b>
    <b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Latham (Simon). Latham’s Faulconry, or the Faulcons Lure and Cure, 2 parts in one, 1658/. £2,000-3,000
    <b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Exquemelin (Alexandre Olivier). The History of the Bucaniers of America, 2 volumes in 1, 2nd edition, 1695. £1,000-1,500
    <b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Campbell (Patrick). Travels in the interior inhabited parts of North America..., 1st ed., 1793. £5,000-8,000
    <b><center>Dominic Winter Auctioneers<br>September 27<br>The Library of the Late Christopher Foyle of Beeleigh Abbey: Part One</b>
    <b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Burton (Richard F.). Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, 3 volumes, 1st edition, 1855-56. £5,000-8,000
    <b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Cosway-style binding. Napoleon and the Fair Sex, 1894. One of 9 similar lots. £1,000-1,500
    <b>Dominic Winter, Sep. 27:</b> Shepard (Ernest Howard, 1879-1976). Pooh and Piglet, original pen and ink drawing, 1958. £20,000-30,000
  • <center><b>Sotheby's<br>English Literature and History<br>Available for Immediate Purchase</b>
    <b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> William Shakespeare. <i>A Midsummer-Night's Dream,</i> 1908. 7,500 USD
    <b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. <i>Brontës' Novels,</i> 1922. 2,400 USD
    <b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> Lewis Carroll. <i>Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There,</i> 1872. 25,000 USD
    <b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> Charles Dickens. Collection of Fiction including <i>Oliver Twist</i> and <i>Sketches by Boz,</i> 1838-1865. 6,250 USD
    <b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> Mary Shelley. <i>Frankenstein,</i> 1839. 4,250 USD
    <b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> James Joyce. <i>Ulysses,</i> 1925. 2,500 USD
    <b>Sotheby’s, Available Now:</b> Jane Austen. <i>The Complete Works of Jane Austen,</i> 1901. 5,250 USD
  • <center><b>Christie’s<br>Charlie Watts: Literature and Jazz<br>London and online auction<br>15–29 September</b>
    <b>Christie’s, Explore now:</b><br>F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940). <i>The Great Gatsby.</i> New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925. £100,000–150,000
    <b>Christie’s, Explore now:</b><br>Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930). </i>The Hound of the Baskervilles: Another Adventure of Sherlock Holmes.</b> London: George Newnes, 1902. £70,000–100,000
    <b>Christie’s, Explore now:</b><br>Agatha Christie (1890–1976). <i>The Thirteen Problems.</i> London: for the Crime Club Ltd. by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1932. £40,000–60,000
    <b>Christie’s, Explore now:</b><br>Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961). <i>The Maltese Falcon.</i> New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930. £30,000–50,000

Rare Book Monthly

Articles - September - 2023 Issue

The “Bouquinistes” of Paris and the Green Pandora’s Boxes

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The green wooden boxes near Notre-Dame, Paris.

The city of Paris will welcome the Olympic games in 2024. As the opening ceremony on the Seine River approaches, the officials plan to remove the emblematic booksellers’ wooden boxes from the picture! For security’s sake, they claim; but Jérôme Callais, head of ACBP (Association Culturelle des Bouquinistes de Paris), doesn’t buy it—and he refuses to let the city touch his boxes. As the French say, “j’y suis, j’y reste.*”

 

They are trying to bring down a symbol!” Jérôme Callais tells me on the phone. “We are to Paris what the gondolas are to Venice! We’ve been there for more than 400 years—and they want to erase us? We won’t let it happen.” Jérôme is calm but determined. He’s been operating a box on the banks of the Seine for more than 30 years. He’s a “bouquiniste des quais”—the term derives from the Dutch “boeckijn” that describes small inexpensive books. Taking a walk on the banks of the Seine to dig these old green wooden boxes is indeed a French cultural cliché. As a matter of fact they are part of our immaterial cultural patrimony since 2019. There are 900 wooden boxes, clamped on the stone parapets. “The parapets belong to the city of Paris, but the boxes belong to us,” Jérôme explains. “Every year, the city tacitly renews our concession, but we don’t pay any rent as the government has always considered that you can’t get rich selling books.” Today, Jérôme fears the “bouquinistes” might be a wrong decision away from disappearing.

 

 

The Olympic parade will sail down the Seine next summer, and everybody is expecting a magnificent spectacle. The officials are concerned, though—could a terrorist hide a bomb inside a book box? Jérôme shrugs: “We’ve met with the staff of the city of Paris last July. We’ve agreed to close down our boxes for 8 days, and to let the mine-clearing experts to do their job. Nobody will have the right to lean or sit on the parapets anyway. So there’ll be barriers all along the way and no one will be able to come close to the boxes.” Yet, the city of Paris seems to prefer another option: they’d like to take the boxes down, most likely to clear the view for the spectators. To make it look better, they offer to freely restore the boxes before replacing them on the parapets. “Here is our concern,” Jérôme says. “Each box is unique—some are 120 years old, some have counterweights, others have none. They have no clue how to take them down without damaging them—and it would take at least two months! Then they will trash the damaged ones and replace them with brand new ones. But it’s crucial to preserve the authenticity of our boxes. They have soul!” What about the old books market that the city offers to open nearby during the games? “Nonsense! The “bouquinistes” belong nowhere else but on the banks of the Seine.”

 

The status of the “bouquinistes” is quite peculiar—and fragile. Selling books alongside the Seine is a labour of love. “Yesterday, I worked for 6 hours—and I earned 26 euros,” Jérôme says. As their boxes grow less profitable, some “bouquinistes” don’t bother opening them that often nowadays. “Some of them remain closed for long periods, and the city of Paris doesn’t like that,” Jérôme says. Other so-called “bouquinistes” know better, though—they don’t sell books anymore, but cheap souvenirs to the herds of tourists. Jérôme sighs: “We used to have strict rules, and we’ve asked the city of Paris to help us enforce them—but they don’t do much.” That’s why he fears the city of Paris might change the rules of the game on that occasion. Yet, he’s quite confident. Not only is the proposal of locking the boxes down without touching them still on the table, but also the media are reacting. The New York Times wrote an article about the situation last month, so did the French newspaper Sud-Ouest. The SLAM (Syndicat national de la Librairie Ancienne et Moderne) has expressed its unconditional support to the “bouquinistes” in an official declaration. TV channels come to interview Jérôme every week in front of his box, and public opinion is clearly siding with the “bouquinistes”. It’s probably only a matter of time before the city of Paris realises there’s nothing but bad publicity to gain here. “To quote Bernini, I think that most of the time, people are more stupid than evil. I guess someone from the city hall took an inconsiderate decision and basically tried to apply it. I hope we will soon come to an agreement; but in the meantime, we won’t drop our guard. To let them touch our boxes would be like opening Pandora’s box. We have no idea where it would lead us. So we call upon everyone to support us. Let’s make sure that this cultural exception doesn’t disappear.”

 

 

Thibault Ehrengardt

 

 

* —I’m here, and I’ll stay here.

 

To contact the Association Culturelle des Bouquinistes de Paris: 

www.livre-rare-book.com/d/833343720

 

 

Rare Book Monthly

  • <b><center>Forum Auctions<br>Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper<br>28th September 2023</b>
    <b>Forum Auctions, Sep. 28:</b> Asia.- Mandeville (Sir John). <i>Tractato bellissimo delle piu maravigliose cose & piu motabile che sitrovino nelle parte delmondo,</i> Florence, [Lorenzo Morgiani], [?1505] or possibly, 1496-99. £40,000 to £60,000.
    <b>Forum Auctions, Sep. 28:</b> Arabic ms.- Ghazaliyaat Kan'at al-Arabi [Divan of Poetry written in Arabic], illuminated manuscript in Arabic, Safavid Persia (probably Isfahan), [second quarter of 16th century]. £12,000 to £16,000.
    <b>Forum Auctions, Sep. 28:</b> Foxe (John). <i>Actes and monuments of these latter and perillous dayes, touching matters of the Church…,</i> first edition, dwellyng ouer Aldersgate, [20th March, 1563]. £15,000 to £20,000.
    <b><center>Forum Auctions<br>Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper<br>28th September 2023</b>
    <b>Forum Auctions, Sep. 28:</b> Barrie (J.M.) <i>Peter Pan or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up,</i> first play edition, signed presentation inscription from the author "To my dear Jane Pan", 1928. £3,000 to £4,000.
    <b>Forum Auctions, Sep. 28:</b> Gillray (James). John Bull taking a Luncheon: -or- British Cooks, cramming Old Grumble-Gizzard, with Bonne-Chére, etching with hand-colouring, 1798. £1,500 to £2,000.
    <b>Forum Auctions, Sep. 28:</b> Middle East.- Roberts (David). <i>The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt & Nubia,</i> 6 vol. bound as 4, first edition, 1842-49. £12,000 to £18,000.
    <b><center>Forum Auctions<br>Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper<br>28th September 2023</b>
    <b>Forum Auctions, Sep. 28:</b> Greenwood (C. & J.) <i>Map of London made from an Actual Survey in the Years 1824, 1825 & 1826...,</i> first edition, engraved map, 1827. £15,000 to £20,000.
    <b>Forum Auctions, Sep. 28:</b> Newton (Sir Isaac). <i>Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light…,</i> first edition, 1704. £15,000 to £20,000.
    <b>Forum Auctions, Sep. 28:</b> Smith (Percy John Delf). Collection of 19 original preliminary drawings for "Twelve Drypoints of the War 1914-1918", circa 1914-1918; together with 11 drypoints from "Twelve Drypoints of the War 1914-1918", 1925. £15,000 to
    <b><center>Forum Auctions<br>Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper<br>28th September 2023</b>
    <b>Forum Auctions, Sep. 28:</b> Guild of Women Binders.- Watts (Alaric A.) <i>Lyrics of the Heart: with other poems</I>, in a stunning richly gilt green crushed morocco by the Guild of Women Binders, Longman, 1851. £12,000 to £18,000.
    <b>Forum Auctions, Sep. 28:</b> Cosway binding.- Dodgson (Charles Lutwidge). "Lewis Carroll". <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,</i> in a Cosway binding with miniatures by Miss C.B. Currie, 1868. £10,000 to £15,000.
    <b>Forum Auctions, Sep. 28:</b> Fleming (Ian). <i>Casino Royale,</i> first edition, first impression, 1953. £18,000 to £22,000.
  • <center><b>Swann Auction Galleries View Our Record Breaking Results</b>
    <b>Swann:</b> Charles Monroe Schulz, <i>The Peanuts gang,</i> complete set of 13 drawings, ink, 1971. Sold June 15 — $50,000.
    <b>Swann:</b> Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Family Archive of Photographs & Letters. Sold June 1 — $60,000.
    <b>Swann:</b> Victor H. Green, <i>The Negro Motorist Green Book,</i> New York, 1949. Sold March 30 — $50,000.
    <b>Swann:</b> William Shakespeare, <i>King Lear; Othello;</i> [and] <i>Anthony & Cleopatra;</i> Extracted from the First Folio, London, 1623. Sold May 4— $185,000.
    <center><b>Swann Auction Galleries View Our Record Breaking Results</b>
    <b>Swann:</b> William Samuel Schwartz, <i>A Bridge in Baraboo, Wisconsin,</i> oil on canvas, circa 1938. Sold February 16 — $32,500.
    <b>Swann:</b> Lena Scott Harris, <i>Group of approximately 65 hand-colored botanical studies, all apparently California native plants,</i> hand-colored silver prints, circa 1930s. Sold February 23 — $37,500.
    <b>Swann:</b> Suzanne Jackson, <i>Always Something To Look For,</i> acrylic & pencil on linen canvas, circa 1974. Sold April 6 — $87,500.
    <b>Swann:</b> Gustav Klimt, <i>Das Werk von Gustav Klimt,</i> complete with 50 printed collotype plates, Vienna & Leipzig, 1918. Sold June 15 — $68,750.
  • <b><center>CONSIGN NOW</b>
    <b>Ketterer Rare Books, Preview:</b></br> H. Scherer, <i>Atlas novus exhibens orbem terraqueum,</i> 1702-10.<br>Est: € 15,000
    <b>Ketterer Rare Books, Preview:</b></br> L. de Varthema, <i>Die Ritterlich und lobwirdig rayß,</i> 1515.<br>Est: € 60,000
    <b>Ketterer Rare Books, Preview:</b></br> G. Heym, <i>Umbra vitae,</i> 1924.<br>Est: € 8,000
    <b>Ketterer Rare Books, Preview:</b></br>F. de Wit, <i>Orbis maritimus ofte Zee Atlas,</i> around 1680.<br>Est: € 15,000
  • <center><b>Gonnelli: Auction 46 Books<br>Autographs & Manuscripts<br>Oct 3rd-5th 2023</b>
    <b>Gonnelli:</b> Tilson - Zanotto, Il vero tema. 2011. Starting price 150 €
    <b>Gonnelli:</b> Munari, Storia di un filo. Starting price 400 €
    <b>Gonnelli:</b> Debord, Contre le cinéma. 1964. Starting price 150 €
    <b>Gonnelli:</b> Futurism books and ephemera
    <b>Gonnelli:</b> Travel books
    <b>Gonnelli:</b> Medicine books
    <b>Gonnelli:</b> Levaillant, Histoire naturelle des perroquets. 1801-1805. Starting price 52.000 €
    <b>Gonnelli:</b> Carrera, Il gioco de gli scacchi. 1617. Starting price 3200 €
    <b>Gonnelli:</b> Vergilius, Opera. 1515. Starting price 800 €
  • <b><center>Forum Auctions<br>Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins<br>26th September 2023</b>
    <b>Forum, Sep. 26:</b> Alken (Henry), Thomas Egerton et al. <i>The Melange of Humour,</i> first collected edition, Printed by W. Lewis, [c.1835]. £2,000 to £3,000.
    <b>Forum, Sep. 26:</b> [Cheny (John) and Thomas Butler, publishers]. <i>[Horses & Their Pedigrees],</i> Cheny & Butler, 1740-1746 or 1751-1753. £4,000 to £6,000.
    <b>Forum, Sep. 26:</b> Dikenman (R.) Voyage en Suisse, Zurich, [c.1830]. £2,000 to £3,000.
    <b><center>Forum Auctions<br>Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins<br>26th September 2023</b>
    <b>Forum, Sep. 26:</b> Eckert (H.A.) Monten (Dietrich) and F. Schlever. <i>Das K.K. Russische Militair aus dem grossen Werke Saemmtliche Truppen von Europa,</i> first edition, Wuerzburg, 1840 [but c.1842]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    <b>Forum, Sep. 26:</b> Havell, Junior (Robert). <I>Costa Scena, or a Cruise along the Southern Coast of Kent,</I> hand-coloured aquatint panorama with original boxwood drum, 1823. £3,000 to £4,000.
    <b>Forum, Sep. 26:</b> Heideloff (Victor). <i>Ansichten des Herzoglich Württembergischen Landsitzes Hohenheim,</i> first edition in original 6 parts, Nuremberg, 1795-1800. £4,000 to £6,000.
    <b><center>Forum Auctions<br>Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins<br>26th September 2023</b>
    <b>Forum, Sep. 26:</b> Jones (Owen) and Jules Goury. <i>Views on the Nile: from Cairo to the Second Cataract,</i> first edition, Graves and Warmsley, 1843. £3,000 to £4,000.
    <b>Forum, Sep. 26:</b> Meyer (Johann Heinrich). <i>Der Rigiberg in Zeichnungen nach der Natur,</i> Zurich, Fuessli, 1807. £3,000 to £4,000.
    <b>Forum, Sep. 26:</b> Nichol (Andrew). <i>Five Views of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway,</i> first edition, Dublin, William Frederick Wakeman, 1834. £5,000 to £7,000.
    <b><center>Forum Auctions<br>Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins<br>26th September 2023</b>
    <b>Forum, Sep. 26:</b> Schetky (J. C.) A series of four sketches, illustrative of various situations of His Majesty's Ship Pique, Portsea, Trives & Maynard, 1835. £4,000 to £6,000.
    <b>Forum, Sep. 26:</b> Stackelberg (Otto Magnus von). <i>Costumes et Usages des Peuples de la Grece Moderne,</i> first edition, Rome, 1825. £20,000 to £30,000.
    <b>Forum, Sep. 26:</b> Stucchi (Stanislao). <i>Raccolta di Scene Teatrali eseguite o disegnate dai più celebri Pittori Scenici in Milano,</i> 3 vol., Milan, 1817. £6,000 to £8,000.

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