By Bruce McKinney Two stops from Times Square and a ten minute walk toward the Hudson River brings me to a lovely building to meet Madeline Kripke, an extraordinary woman who lives among her books, manuscripts and ephemera in a frenzied embrace with words and their history. Emotionally charged words in particular have pride of place. Getting through the front door is an undertaking for open space long ago lost its argument with material and conventional order. Today the printed word in many forms occupies all the expected spaces such as shelves and also every table top and counter. The ais...
By Michael Stillman
Abebooks finally went live with its Bookseller Rating system last month, and we have heard two reactions from the dealers: so what, and this represents a knife in the hear...
by Renée Magriel Roberts
Early this month I was busy with the daily routine -- you know, crisply processing orders, corresponding with customers and suppliers, doing data entry, hauling boxes o...
By Bruce and Tom McKinney
A great database is no greater than its accessibility. For more than ten years databases of books have been evolving online and for the past five the AED, the largest ...
By Michael Stillman
We received a press release from multi-site book searcher BookFinder.com that highlights one of the major cost issues with books these days. No, we are not talking about th...
By Bruce McKinney
At the stroke of midnight over the evening of September 2nd as the second hand plows on into the 3rd in San Francisco, in Australia it's already late afternoon, rush hour in E...
By Bruce McKinney
Beginning on August 9th and continuing through the 12th the Robert J. Brown Company of Indianapolis brought to conclusion the long considered sale of material owned by the Si...
By Michael Stillman
The other half of New York's most famous "bookends" passed away two weeks ago, bringing a close to an era and a story never to be repeated. Longtime bookseller Madeleine Ster...
By Bruce McKinney
The first annual Santa Fe Antiquarian Book Show is to be held October 5 and 6, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is a book fair springing to life and the culmination of more than s...
By Michael Stillman
In the past, we have taken a look at some of Google's services that relate to books, whether selling, collecting, or using for research. There is Google Book Search, the prog...
By Michael Stillman
AbeBooks will be holding a special, one-item online auction from September 6-11, all for a good cause. Collectors of modern novelists will certainly be tempted to place a bid...
Seventeen new bookseller catalogues are reviewed in Section Two of AE Monthly for September. There is modern literature from Ken Lopez, literature and entertainment from Waverly Books. There is a c...
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.