Sotheby, Parke Bernet & Co. (London)

Two parts in one volume (25 cm), I (14-15 November 1977): 215 (5) pp., including folding colour frontispiece, black & white text illustrations. Lots numbered 1-344. II (8-9 May 1978): 260 (38) pp., colour frontispiece, black & white illustrations. Lots numbered 345-698. Lists of Estimates and of Prices realised and buyers’ names tipped in. Morocco-backed boards, a collector’s binding. - Catalogue of a collection of books aiming to represent with at least one example every town in Europe in which printing took place in the fifteenth century; an astonishing total of nearly 250 cities and towns was achieved. Many lots set record prices: the blockbook Apocalypse made £180,000 (Kraus, for the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz); the Cologne 1471-1472 Bartholomaeus Anglicus realised £34,000 (also Kraus). The Pierpont Morgan Library acquired 24 lots, including the first books printed at Albi, Grenoble, and Metz. Ehrman’s interests were wide-ranging and the library he collected at his country house in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, was vast: more than 2000 bookbindings and a collection of early book-trade lists and catalogues were given to the Bodleian Library (see An artful craft: fine and historic bookbindings from the Broxbourne Library and other collections, published 2009; and The distribution of books by catalogue from the invention of printing to A.D. 1800, published 1965); nine incunabula and fifteen 16th century books (of which thirteen were the only recorded copies) were presented to the British Library (see “Department of Printed Books: acquisitions from the Broxbourne Library” in The British Library Journal, volume 6, 1980, pp.86-107); and Cambridge University Library received collections of type specimens and books of typographical interest (Alan Fern, “Typographical specimen books in the Broxbourne Library” in The Book Collector, volume 5, 1956, pp.256-272). Percy Muir, “Private Libraries, XVIII: The Broxbourne Library” in The Times Literary Supplement, 24 June 1939, p.380. Albert Ehrman, “The Broxbourne Library (Contemporary collectors, 2)” in The Book Collector, volume 3 (1954), pp.190-197. ¶ Excellent, unmarked copy.