Sotheby, Parke Bernet & Co. (London)

(28 cm), 127 (9) pp., illustrations (some in colour). 20 lots. Printed List of estimates loosely inserted. Publisher’s plain yellow interim wrappers. - Sale catalogue of twenty manuscripts from the Fürstlich-Fürstenbergische Hofbibliothek in Donaueschingen, Baden-Württemberg. All twenty found buyers; Kraus paid £220,000 for an eighth-century manuscript of Orosius’s History of the World, written at Corbie Abbey, and £308,000 for the Sacramentary of Augsburg Cathedral, written c. 1000-1030. Six fragments of a vellum sheet from a 5th century Bible, the oldest known manuscript of the Old Testament in Latin, were bought by Winsor T. Savery for £17,600 (saleroom report in The Times, 22 June 1982, p.2). The sale realised £1,032,020. “The catalogue and the estimates represent a new peak of scholarly and commercial precision” (The Book Collector, volume 31, 1982, p.346). In 1993, Sotheby’s negotiated the sale of the remaining manuscripts to Baden-Württemberg, for DM 48m (Bewahrtes Kulturerbe, “unberechenbare Zinsen”: Katalog zur Ausstellung der vom Land Baden-Württemberg erworbenen Handschriften der Fürstlich Fürstenbergischen Hofbibliothek, edited by Felix Heinzer, Stuttgart 1993). ¶ Rare “advance copy”, issued in plain yellow-paper wrappers. Annotated with prices and buyers’ names.