Sotheby, Parke Bernet Inc. (New York)

(26 cm), (16) 424 (8) pp., illustrations. 609 lots. List of prices realised loosely inserted. Publisher’s printed boards - First portion of the Thomas Streeter Library, expertly catalogued by David Lasswell, quoting freely from the collector’s own notes, well-supplied with references, often with collations, and almost always with at least an immediate provenance. “Sotheby’s Parke-Bernet Galleries are clearly determined to make this massive series of catalogues not only a worthy record of a great library but also, as its owner wished, a lasting work of reference. They have made an auspicious start” (John Carter, “Streeter and his Americana”, in The Times Literary Supplement, 19 January 1967, p.56). The second Plannck edition of the Columbus Letter, Rome 1493, was bought by John Fleming for $30,000; it had sold in the knock-out after the Chadenat sale in Paris in 1950 for less than $5000. Although chosen in 1967 to be Cornell University’s “three millionth volume”, the book was later released, and reappeared on the market with H.P. Kraus, Americana Vetustissima: Fifty Books, Manuscripts, & maps relating to America from the first fifty years after its discovery (1493-1542) (New York 1990), item 1. Donald C. Dickinson, Dictionary of American Book Collectors (New York 1986), pp.301-302. ¶ Part I only (the library was dispersed in a series of seven auctions, conducted October 1966-October 1969). Unmarked copy.