Sotheby & Co. (London)

(25 cm), 28 pp., 16 leaves of plates (including frontispiece). 21 lots. Publisher’s green printed wrappers. - “The high prices realized testified to the owner’s great reputation as a connoisseur, while a comparison with prices brought in earlier days by the same MSS testified equally to his shrewd judgment as a buyer” (from a saleroom report in The Book Collector, Autumn 1957, p.287). A tenth-century English manuscript of Boethius was bought by Eisemann for the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana for £6600; a manuscript of Plato’s Dialogues by the humanist scholar Leonardo Aretino was bought for stock by Arthur Rau for £5800 (sold in March 1958 to the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana; now Ms 136). Further manuscripts were sold by Sotheby’s on 19 May 1958. Cockerell’s unique collection of books from the Kelmscott Press, the Ashendene Press, the Doves Press, and others, had been sold at Sotheby’s on 10 December 1956. Cf. Richard A. Linenthal, “Sydney Cockerell: bookseller in all but name” in Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, volume 13 (2007), pp.363-386. ¶ Title inscribed: J.C.C. Taylor. Priced in pencil, with buyers’ names and sale total (£27,315).