Rare Book Monthly Articles - August - 2013 Issue

Your Lying Heart

Your Lying Heart

Books have for more than a hundred years been common and their principle purpose – to carry information to the interested.   A few among these many volumes have become collectible, the best of them talisman of taste, beauty or priority and sometimes all three.  Such books are sometimes first impressions, others wonderful presentations and annotated copies, others still rare and very rare, the best of them highly collectible. While books are common the eye to appreciate their finer points and physical attributes is rare.  Everyone has an opinion but only a few have perspective.    For those...

Comic-Con:  it's no laughing matter

Comic-Con:  it's no laughing matter

Is it that time of year again?  Yup.  The festival of printed cartoons ran July 18th to July 21st in San Diego as in past years.  It’s close enough to Hollywood to attract real life cartoon charact...

The Breaker : Still controversial – but it can be profitable

The Breaker : Still controversial – but it can be profitable

The breaker is the Lord Voldemort of the book world, the name that is - at best - reluctantly uttered. It’s the book that comes in ratty and usually for a low price and gets taken apart and resold ...

In The News: They Are Still Making New Manuscripts, But Not Old Books

In The News: They Are Still Making New Manuscripts, But Not Old Books

Perhaps the saddest thing about computers, email and the like, is what it means for the old documents generations have preserved, studied, and collected. We aren't making them any more. No one writ...

Apple Convicted for Role in E-Books Price Fixing Scheme

Apple Convicted for Role in E-Books Price Fixing Scheme

The last man standing has fallen in the government's lawsuit over price fixing of electronic books. Unlike its partners in “crime,” Apple did not go down without a fight. Indeed, Apple says it will...

Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers, a new banner and online address

Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers, a new banner and online address

The name Mealy has long been associated with the Fine Art and Antiquarian Book Trade in Ireland. Established by George Mealy in 1934, the name Mealy is synonymous with one of Ireland's foremost auc...

The Modern Theophraste, Or The Rehabilitation of Pierre-Jacques Brillon

The Modern Theophraste, Or The Rehabilitation of Pierre-Jacques Brillon

The grand siècle was the paramount of French wit. Under the yoke of the Sun King, the Nobility was reduced to a bunch of courtisans. To be noticed by the King or some important people around him wa...

Guilty Plea for $600,000 Worth of Stolen Books Sold on Half.com

Guilty Plea for $600,000 Worth of Stolen Books Sold on Half.com

A Massachusetts resident pleaded guilty to stealing over $600,000 worth of books, audiobooks, and legos, and selling them online at Half.com. Half.com? Didn't they go out of business ten years ago?...

Google Wins a Small Victory in Long-Running Google Books Case

Google Wins a Small Victory in Long-Running Google Books Case

Google won a small victory in its eight-year-old Google Books litigation, a lawsuit where the major battles have gone against them. Google has been scanning old books to make their texts available ...

Two among many Sales in August

Two among many Sales in August

Not so long ago August was a quiet month in the rare book auction field but not so much any more.  The tightness in the calendar in both spring and fall makes January and August appealing for the l...

Auctions in August 2013

Auctions in August 2013

This month there are 43 events posted to the auction calendar.  This passes for a quiet month but it is actually the busiest August on record.  A generation ago auction houses took August off but n...

Death Comes to the Telegram

Death Comes to the Telegram

The news that flashed across the wires last month sounded definitive. The oldest form of long-distance instantaneous communications had come to an end, roughly 170 years after its birth. A form of ...

Who'll be on the postage stamp?

Who'll be on the postage stamp?

The post office has been having a tough go.  Founded in 1775 and brought to life by Benjamin Franklin, the idea was to provide delivery of news and documents between random places on a predictable ...

AltaVista RIP

AltaVista RIP

This is not a story about books. There... now that I have lost most of my readers, I can write about whatever I want. This is about how access to information changes. Once slowly, changes now flash...

15 Catalogues Reviewed for August

15 Catalogues Reviewed for August

For the month of August, we have 15 new catalogues under review. Aquila Books and Meridian Rare Books have combined to take us to the top of the world – Mt. Everest. Garrett Scott, Bookseller takes...

Rare Book Monthly

  • Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli: Pietro Aquila, Psyche and Proserpina,1690. Starting price 140€
    Gonnelli: Jacques Gamelin, Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris, 1779. Starting price 300€
    Gonnelli: Giorgio Ghisi, The final Judgement, 1680. Starting price 480€
    Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli Goya y Lucientes Francisco, Los Proverbios.1877. Starting price 1000 €
    Gonnelli: Domenico Peruzzini, Long bearded old man, 1660. Starting price 2200€
    Gonnelli: Enea Vico, Leda and the Swan,1542. Starting price 140€
    Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli: Andrea Del Sarto [school of], San Giovanni Battista, 1570. Starting price 25000€
    Gonnelli: Carlo Maratta, Virgin Mary and Jesus, 1660. Starting Price 1200€
    Gonnelli: Louis Brion de La Tour, Sphére de Copernic Sphere de Ptolemée / Le Systême de Ptolemée. Le Systême de Ticho-Brahe…, 1766. Starting price 180€
    Gonnelli
    Auction 59
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    May 20th 2025
    Gonnelli: Marc’Antonio Dal Re, Ville di Delizia o Siano Palaggi Camparecci nello Stato di Milano Divise in Sei Tomi Con espressevi le Piante…, Tomo Primo, 1726. Starting price 7000€
    Gonnelli: Katsushika Hokusai, Bird on a branch, 1843. Starting price 100€
  • Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: Th. McKenney & J. Hall, History of the Indian tribes of North America, 1836-1844. Est: €50,000
    Ketterer, May 26: Biblia latina vulgata, manuscript on thin parchment, around 1250. Est: €70,000
    Ketterer, May 26: M. Beckmann, Fanferlieschen Schönefüßchen, 1924. Est: €10,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: A. Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1574. Est: €50,000
    Ketterer, May 26: M. S. Merian, Eurcarum ortus, alimentum et paradoxa metamorphosis, 1717-18. Est: €6,000
    Ketterer, May 26: PAN, 9 volumes, 1895-1900. Est: €12,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: Breviarium Romanum, Latin manuscript, 1474. Est: €15,000
    Ketterer, May 26: Quran manuscript from the Saadian period, Maghreb, 16th century. Est: €10,000
    Ketterer, May 26: E. Hemingway, The old man and the sea, 1952. First edition in first issue jacket. Presentation copy. Est: €3,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction May 26th
    Ketterer, May 26: Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De re militari libri quatuor, 1553. Est: €3,000
    Ketterer, May 26: K. Marx, Das Kapital, 1867. Est: €30,000
    Ketterer, May 26: Brassaï, Transmutations, 1967. Est: €6,000
  • Leland Little, May 21: Signed Artist Proof of the Monumental G.O.A.T.: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali.
    Leland Little, May 21: Assorted Rare Publications Related to H.P. Lovecraft, Including The Recluse Signed by Vincent Starrett.
    Leland Little, May 21: Two Issues of The Vagrant, Including the First Appearance of H.P. Lovecraft's "Dagon" in Number Eleven.
    Leland Little, May 21: Rare First Printing of Anne of Green Gables, With ALS from the Author.
    Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, In First Issue Jacket.
    Leland Little, May 21: The Limited Paumanok Edition of The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman.
    Leland Little, May 21: Beautifully Bound Limited Flaubert Edition of The Works of Guy de Maupassant.
    Leland Little, May 21: First Edition of Bonaparte's Celebrated American Ornithology, With Spectacular Hand-Colored Plates.
    Leland Little, May 21: A Rare Complete Set of Jardine's The Naturalist's Library, With Hand-Colored Plates.
    Leland Little, May 21: Invitation to the Lincoln-Johnson National Inaugural Ball, March 4th, 1865.
    Leland Little, May 21: A Scarce Inscribed First Edition of James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name.
    Leland Little, May 21: Picasso's Le Goût du Bonheur, Limited Edition.
  • 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

Article Search

Archived Articles

Ask Questions