Rare Book Monthly Articles - August - 2021 Issue

The personal collection of William [Bill] S. Reese is to be sold by Christie's beginning in May, 2022

The personal collection of William [Bill] S. Reese is to be sold by Christie's beginning in May, 2022

Bill Reese, who passed away in 2018, was both a rare book dealer and a collector of Americana, other books, prints, and art.  It was a great privilege for me to be his client for a decade.  In 2002, Bill Reese became the very first member of Americana Exchange (now RareBookHub).  In 2022 his exceptional personal collection will be sold at Christie's and it will be a monumental event.   The collection, acquired over decades, will be dispersed in a matter of days and hours:  his fourteen thousand days in the field, converted into "May I have an opening bid?  On the left, yes in the back and...

Sale of Honresfield Library, Including Major Brontë Sisters Material, Put on Hold

Sale of Honresfield Library, Including Major Brontë Sisters Material, Put on Hold

What Sotheby's said would be one of the great library sales of recent years has been called off, and for the noblest of reasons. The sale was of the Honresfield Library, one of the greatest British...

Nobody Said It Would Be Easy - Running a Big Bookstore Texas Style (DFW)

Nobody Said It Would Be Easy - Running a Big Bookstore Texas Style (DFW)

It’s a fantasy we all have: Let’s open a really good old style bookstore. We’ll buy an antique building in a sleepy little town on the outskirts of some major metro area and hope that with a lot of...

Library Books Overdue for More than 70 Years Finally Returned

Library Books Overdue for More than 70 Years Finally Returned

We have a couple of stories of overdue library books this month. These are not typical overdue books, but ones dating back to the first half of the twentieth century. Such books rarely ever make a ...

Tom Goldwasser has relocated to Connecticut

Tom Goldwasser has relocated to Connecticut

Thomas A. Goldwasser Rare Books [ABAA] has recently moved offices from San Francisco to bucolic Connecticut where the firm will continue to develop its web presence, while issuing occasional virtua...

The Big Guns will be in the rooms:  At Bonhams

The Big Guns will be in the rooms: At Bonhams

Books, manuscript, maps, and ephemera take you only so far.  It’s possible to disappear into a great story but it’s close to shocking to consider you can personally acquire objects mentioned, pictu...

Mademoiselle de Bazincourt: Style Defines The Man and the Woman

Mademoiselle de Bazincourt: Style Defines The Man and the Woman

Style defines the man, Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon once said—it also defines the woman, of course; but it was less frequently underlined in the 18th century. That’s probably one of the reasons ...

Where are we going from here?:  Dealers & the Online Era

Where are we going from here?: Dealers & the Online Era

Every book town has the bookstore. The singular institution run by a bookseller with decades of experience. You need to prepare yourself for such places. Fortify yourself to sustain your focus for ...

Book Censorship is Raising Its Head Again, and This is a Bad Sign

Book Censorship is Raising Its Head Again, and This is a Bad Sign

Some disturbing news has come out of Hungary recently of concern to those who support freedom of ideas in books. Hungary might not seem an important place on the world stage, but as those cognizant...

Donald Heald Auctions:  On Plan

Donald Heald Auctions: On Plan

Donald Heald, the New York rare book dealer, had been watching the emergence of auctions over the past decade as an alternative to selling at set prices and concluded the market was increasingly in...

Second Highest Price Ever Paid for a Declaration of Independence

Second Highest Price Ever Paid for a Declaration of Independence

Records were set at Freeman's auction in anticipation of July 4 when a copy of the Declaration of Independence sold for over $4 million. According to Freeman's, that was the highest aucrion price e...

Helen R. Kahn has Retired

Helen R. Kahn has Retired

A few months ago Helen R. Kahn sold her stock of rare books, maps and manuscripts to Patrick McGahern Books.  The news arrived in an email mentioning that the Kahn stock is now offered by the McGah...

Record Price for Soccer Card, Female Athlete's Collectible Card

Record Price for Soccer Card, Female Athlete's Collectible Card

Another month, another collectible card setting record prices. However, this one is nowhere even near the price of other cards we have seen. It's not the $5 million+ spent on a Babe Ruth or Mickey ...

Four New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

Four New Catalogues Reviewed This Month

This month we review four new bookseller catalogues. Forest Books has a miscellany that seems to cover every imaginable subject. Stuart Lutz Historic Documents has many manuscripts and autographs o...

Rare Book Monthly

  • 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.
  • Rare Book Hub is now mobile-friendly!
  • DOYLE
    Rare Books, Autographs & Maps
    July 23, 2025
    DOYLE, July 23: WALL, BERNHARDT. Greenwich Village. Types, Tenements & Temples. Estimate $300-500
    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.

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