Friday, March 20, 2015

REYNARD THE FOX, available at auction--of interest to fans of Amazon's BOSCH

Swann Auction Galleries April 9, 2015 auction, Early Printed, Medical, Science & Travel Books includes a 1681 Edition of a verse adaptation of Reynard the Fox.  Perhaps the eventual buyer will be associated with the Amazon Series, Bosch, since Season 1 focused on a serial killer named Reynard, and the medieval epic was key to plot line.  I am not familiar with Michael Connelly the author of the Bosch crime novel series but I expect they too would be a prime interest group for this auction.

This appears to be a nice edition and certainly for the right buyer, the price is reasonable.  A low ball starting bid of $250 might even be a winning bid.

From the Swann on-line catalog:
(REYNARD THE FOX.) Shurley, John The Most Delightful History of Reynard the Fox: in Heroic Verse. 8 woodcut text illustrations. [8], 114 pages, including etched additional title. 4to, 216x175 mm, later 19th-century vellum boards by Birdsall, spine ends damaged; additional title darkened, torn across upper margin and restored, light dampstaining and soiling on letterpress title and next leaf, upper portion of letterpress title torn and restored with text replaced in meticulous pen-and-ink facsimile, repaired hole farther down affecting a few words, last page heavily soiled; uncut and largely unopened. London: Thomas Passinger and Charles Passinger, 1681

Estimate $500 - 750

first edition of this English verse adaptation of the medieval animal epic. Menke, Bibliotheca Reinardiana, pages 230-31; Wing S3514.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

300 Million USD Private Library Donated to Princeton. The Scheide Family Collection previously a cherished guest at Princeton, now owned by Princeton.

This is the dream come true, a multi-generational private library, valued at 300 Million USD is donated to Princeton University.  When I dream about my library, I dream that someday, the collection will have value to someone or some institute.  Everyone should dream big!

Musician, musicologist, bibliophile and philanthropist William H. Scheide, a 1936 Princeton University alumnus who died in November at age 100, has left his extraordinary collection of some 2,500 rare printed books and manuscripts to Princeton University. With an expected appraised value of nearly $300 million, it is the largest gift in the University's history.
The Scheide Library has been housed in Princeton's Firestone Library since 1959, when Scheide moved the collection from his hometown of Titusville, Pennsylvania. It holds the first six printed editions of the Bible, starting with the 1455 Gutenberg Bible, the earliest substantial European printed book; the original printing of the Declaration of Independence; Beethoven's autograph (in his own handwriting) music sketchbook for 1815-16, the only outside Europe; Shakespeare's first, second, third and fourth folios; significant autograph music manuscripts of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Wagner; a lengthy autograph speech by Abraham Lincoln from 1856 on the problems of slavery; and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's original letter and telegram copy books from the last weeks of the Civil War.