Sotheby & Co. (London)

Catalogue of valuable books, the property of a gentleman …comprising books from the libraries of Jean Grolier, J.A. de Thou, P.D. Huet, J.B. Colbert, Mme. de Pompadour, Talleyrand, and Napoleon I : bindings by Caspar Meuser, Antoine Ruette, Dubuison, Bozérian Jeune, Simier and Thouvenin : 19th century and modern bindings by Bedford, Carayon, Chambolle Duru, Claessens, The Dove’s Bindery, Mercier, Marius Michel, Pierson, Rousselle, Sir Edward Sullivan and Zaehnsdorf : fine Parisian bindings of the 16th and 17th centuries : publications of the Grolier and Caxton Clubs : productions of modern private presses : English literature; illuminated horae, etc. (catalogue for an auction conducted by Sotheby & Co., London, 11 August 1941)

London, Sotheby & Co., 1941
(25 cm), (2) 32 pp., frontispiece, [11] leaves of plates. 219 lots. Publisher’s printed wrappers. - A handwritten note on the title-page of the Grolier Club copy identifies the consignor as H. Gordon Selfridge. Lot 59 is one of Grolier’s copies of Zacharias Ferrerius (now in the British Library, Henry Davis collection). Four fake bindings by Louis Hagué were offered; “although Sotheby’s observed the provenance of the first three of these bindings, they omitted to notice that the fourth had also been included in their sale [of John Blacker’s collection] in 1897. One feels, moreover, that the cataloguer might have made clearer their comparatively recent origin” (Percy Muir, “Sotheby’s sale” in The Times Literary Supplement, 27 September 1941, p.104, casting doubt on the authenticity of the Grolier Ferrarius, and of a binding for Madame de Pompadour: “it would appear Madame must have owned two identical copies, for de Ricci records one in a French public library”). ¶ Unmarked copy. Covers and a few pages dusty.

£ 32

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