The Library of Barry Humphries to be sold on March 26th at Forum
- by Bruce E. McKinney
The Library of Barry Humphries to be sold on March 26th at Forum
On 26th March, Forum Auctions will offer the library of Barry Humphries. The sale will feature a remarkable array of books, manuscripts, works on paper and objects from the extensive library of the legendary comedian, actor, author, and satirist Barry Humphries (1934-2023), who delighted audiences for several decades with his eccentric stage and television characters Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson.
Ben Macintyre, a long-time friend of Humphries, once noted that while most people knew ‘Humphries as Dame Edna Everage or Sir Les Patterson […] another of his characters, and a defining one, [was] an old-fashioned, self-proclaimed bibliomaniac’. Born and raised in a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, the renowned entertainer was in his personal life an ardent literary enthusiast, who purchased rare books from a very early age and ultimately became one of Australia’s foremost collectors in the field. One of just 40 members of the exclusive Roxburghe Club – a society for bibliophiles – his house in south Hampstead, London, contained 7,000 books, many of them first editions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The sale at Forum comprises highlights from the remarkable library, a testament to Humphries’ taste for the beautiful and the unusual. The 1890s and the Decadent Movement are an undoubted focal point of the collection. While this certainly includes plenty of works by or relating to the better-known figures from the period such as Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, Humphries’ love of the obscure drove him to unearth rare titles by lesser known figures: Lionel Johnson, Andre Raffalovich and Ernest Dowson, to name a few. Even when collecting standard works by Wilde, Humphries could not resist to bring his unique sense of humour to the fore – a first edition of Wilde’s Dorian Gray, published in Lippincott’s magazine, is here found bound in purple cane toad.
Bindings were another passion for Humphries and again, while he owned many sumptuous bindings that you might expect to find in other great libraries, including richly gilt morocco bindings by Cretté and Paul Kersten, his unique eye and style is evident here. A large number of the books are housed in boxes designed by Humphries himself and these can range from replications of pictorial cloth (the eponymous mist of M.P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud is recreated with inlayed purple morocco) to more abstract decorations and even the odd sly joke (his native cane toad again makes an appearance here).
The Gothic and macabre are also a running theme, from the likes of Ann Radcliffe and Beckford (including his own copy of his gothic masterpiece Vathek and several books owned and annotated by him) to later masters of supernatural and weird fiction such as Sheridan Le Fanu, M. P. Shiel and M. R. James. Aleister Crowley was clearly another favourite, appealing both to the bibliomaniac with the extraordinary rarity of some of his works (Humphries owned one of only two copies on vellum of Ahab and other poems, the only copy that remains in private hands) and seemingly also to Humphries’ humour and his love of the bohemian and transgressive; an aspect of his character that is evident in so many items in this extraordinary collection.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 1: Bob Dylan, his high school classmate's yearbook with his senior portrait, signed and inscribed to her, 1959. $10,000 to $20,000.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 4: Various entertainers, Group of 30 items, signed or inscribed, various dates. $1,500 to $2,500.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 27: John Adams, Autograph Letter Signed to Benjamin Rush introducing Archibald Redford, Paris, 1783. $35,000 to $50,000.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 36: Robert Gould Shaw, Autograph Letter Signed to his father from Camp Andrew, Boston, 1861. $10,000 to $15,000.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 53: Martin Luther King Jr., Time magazine cover, signed and inscribed "Best Wishes," 1957. $5,000 to $7,500.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 127: Paul Gauguin, Autograph Letter regarding payment for paintings, with woodcut letterhead, 1900. $6,000 to $9,000.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 169: Suck: First European Sex Paper, complete group of eight issues, 1969-1974. $800 to $1,200.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 173: Black Panthers, The Racist Dog Policemen Must Withdraw Immediately From Our Communities, poster, 1969. $2,000 to $3,000.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 187: Marc Attali & Jacques Delfau, Les Erotiques du Regard, first edition, Paris, 1968. $300 to $500.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 213: Andy Warhol, Warhol's Index Book, first printing, New York, 1967. $800 to $1,200.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 215: Cookie Mueller, Archive of 17 items, including 4 items inscribed and signed. $3,000 to $4,000.
Swann, Apr. 10: Lot 249: Jamie Reid, The Ten Lessons / The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle; Sex Pistols, chromogenic print with collage, signed, circa 1980. $20,000 to $30,000.
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: 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
![Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Bible [English]. [The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament, 1562]. £3,000-5,000](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/e47bb03e-3f3d-4f68-9e79-b0b2739ca87c.jpg "<b>Dominic Winter, Apr. 9:</b> Bible [English]. [<i>The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament,</i> 1562]. £3,000-5,000")
