A Book Lover's Trip Through Dante's Commedia (or the Care and Preservation of Books)
- by Renee Roberts
Vicious discard practices can land books in the dump.
To find your way to Paradiso, Dante suggests that instead of these tapes, would-be repairers use archival tape, or mending tissue, or double-faced acid-free tape.
Dante also suggests that you don't allow your books to be covered with, putting it politely, filth. The Talins recently received a load of texts that left a taste somewhat like camel dung in their mouths. You do not want to get a dread disease by opening a book. A helpful hint: if you see a cloud of dust when you touch the book, vacuum it.
Special circles in Inferno are reserved for the storers. People just love to store little items in their books, ranging from the pressed flower, to postcards, letters, newspaper articles, money, you name it. Things put in books swell the text and break the binding and create acid marks on the endpapers and the pages. If you want to go to Paradiso, put these extra items, if you must, between acid-free paper or tissue and preferably inside an acid-free box or folder, rather than inside the book.
The circles of the gluers find a special place in book Inferno, ranging from the relatively mild infractions of gluing pieces of the binding to the book, instead of keeping them for the bookbinder, to using the horrific "Elmer's Glue" or any other rigid glue, anywhere. If glue you must, then use a flexible, acid-free white glue to assure your place in Paradiso.
An extra-special place in Inferno is reserved for the users of a ghastly product called "Liquid Leather" which, I am told, has to be chipped with sharp metal tools from any book on which it is found.
Sloppy and/or neurotic personal habits will also land you in Inferno: Writing in books (unless you are the author) or stamping your name over and over and over and over and over again (including on the page edges); eating over a book and leaving the residual within its pages; folding the edges of pages as a book marker; and putting coffee cups on book covers will all buy you a trip over to the Stygian realm.
Now, I love librarians; as a group they safeguard our world's knowledge, are concerned with the greater good, and are largely underpaid. They are heroic, as we have seen in Iraq. Most of them are glorified in Paradiso.
However, a small number (usually those concerned with library book sales) have managed to find their way into the depths of Inferno. After safeguarding books for years, these individuals feel some personal need to just about destroy any books that are about to leave their care. They rip out endpapers, stamp "Discard" over and over again, leave rubber cement residue inside the rear board (where the pocket once was), and gouge the endpapers using the sharpest possible pencil with the new price. These practices, combined with the usual library habits of pasting or heavily taping dust jackets to the boards, stamping each and every plate with the library stamp, and adding other library identification reduce a book to barely "reading copy only" and most likely with a fast track to the dump.
And where are the bookbinders and booksellers? Well, most of us are in Purgatorio, fixing all these problems. Not to worry though. We'll move up into Paradiso eventually, even though it might take thirteen thousand years.
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 17th July 2025
Forum, July 17: Lucianus Samosatensis. Dialogoi, editio princeps, second issue, Florence, Laurentius Francisci de Alopa, 1496. £10,000 to £15,000.
Forum, July 17: Boccaccio (Giovanni). Il Decamerone, Florence, Philippo di Giunta, 1516. £10,000 to £15,000.
Forum, July 17: Henry VII (King) & Philip the Fair (Duke of Burgundy). [Intercursus Magnus], [Commercial and Political Treaty between Henry VII and Philip Duke of Burgundy], manuscript copy in Latin, original vellum, 1499. £8,000 to £12,000.
Forum, July 17: Bible, English. The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New, Robert Barker, 1613. £4,000 to £6,000.
Forum, July 17: Bond (Michael). A Bear Called Paddington, first edition, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1958. £4,000 to £6,000.
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 17th July 2025
Forum, July 17: Yeats (William Butler). The Secret Rose, first edition, with extensive autograph corrections, additions and amendments by the author for a new edition, 1897. £6,000 to £8,000.
Forum, July 17: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bound in dark green morocco elaborately tooled in gilt and with 3 watercolours to fore-edge, by Fazakerley of Liverpool, 1841. £4,000 to £6,000.
Forum, July 17: Miró (Juan), Wassily Kandinsky, John Buckland-Wright, Stanley William Hayter and others.- Spender (Stephen). Fraternity, one of 101 copies, with signed engravings by 9 artists. £6,000 to £8,000.
Forum, July 17: Sowerby (George Brettingham). Album comprising 22 leaves of original watercolour drawings of fossil remains of Cheltenham and Vicinity, [c.1840]. £6,000 to £8,000.
Forum, July 17: Mathematics.- Blue paper copy.- Euclid. De gli Elementi, Urbino, Appresso Domenico Frisolino, 1575. £12,000 to £18,000.
Sotheby’s Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern Now through July 10, 2025
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Book of Hours by the Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht, Use of Sarum, in Latin, Southern Netherlands (Bruges), c.1450. £20,000 to £30,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Albert Einstein. Autograph letter signed, to Attilio Palatino, on his research into General Relativity, 12 May 1929. £12,000 to £18,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: John Gould. The Birds of Europe, [1832-] 1837, 5 volumes, contemporary half morocco, subscriber’s copy. £40,000 to £60,000.
Sotheby’s Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern Now through July 10, 2025
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Ian Fleming. A collection of James Bond first editions, 8 volumes in all. £8,000 to £12,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 1997, first edition, hardback issue. £50,000 to £70,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.R.R. Tolkien. Autograph letter signed, to Amy Ronald, on Pauline Baynes's map of Middle Earth, 1970. £7,000 to £10,000.
DOYLE, July 23: STOKES, I. N. PHELPS. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915-28. Estimate: $3,000-5,000
DOYLE, July 23: [AUTOGRAPH - US PRESIDENT]FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. A signed photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Estimate $500-800
DOYLE, July 23: [ARION PRESS]. ABBOTT, EDWIN A. Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. San Francisco, 1980. Estimate $2,000-3,000.
DOYLE, July 23: TOLSTOY, LYOF N. and NATHAN HASKELL DOLE, translator. Anna Karénina ... in eight parts. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., [1886]. Estimate: $400-600
DOYLE, July 23: ROWLING, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. Estimate $1,200-1,800
Freeman’s | Hindman Western Manuscripts and Miniatures July 8, 2025
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FRANCESCO PETRARCH (b. Arezzo, 20 July 1304; d. Arqua Petrarca, 19 July 1374). $20,000-30,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF THE VITAE IMPERATORUM (active Milan, 1431-1459). $15,000-20,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF ATTAVANTE DEGLI ATTAVANTI (GABRIELLO DI VANTE) (active Florence, c. 1452-c. 1520/25). $15,000-20,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FOLLOWER OF HERMAN SCHEERE (active London, c. 1405-1425). $15,000-20,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. An exceptionally rare, illuminated music leaf from a Mozarabic Antiphonal with sister leaves mostly in museum collections. $11,500-14,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Exceptional leaf from a prestigious Antiphonary by a leading illuminator of the late Duecento. $11,500-14,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF MS REID 33 and SELWERD ABBEY SCRIPTORIUM (AGNES MARTINI?) (active The Netherlands, Groningen, c. 1468-1510). $10,000-15,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Previously unknown illumination from one of the most renowned Gothic Choir Book sets of the Middle Ages. $6,000-8,000.