Bloomsbury Book Auctions (London)

(24.5 cm), [80] pp., text illustrations. Lots numbered 1-130. Publisher’s printed wrappers. - The highest price (£16,500) was paid by the American collector George Abrams for Sebastian Brant’s edition of Aesop (Basel: Jacob Wolff, 1501), a fine (albeit sophisticated) copy formerly in the Duke of Sussex and Huth collections (returned to the market in the Abrams sale, Sotheby’s, London, 16-17 November 1989, lot 131; afterwards in the library of Ladislaus von Hoffmann, his sale by Christie’s, London, 27 October 2010, lot 1, £139,250). The Robert Hoe copy of Orlando Furioso (Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1568), in a contemporary Venetian binding with yapp edges, was bought by Pierre Berès for £13,200 against Quaritch (reappeared in New York in 2016 with PrPh Rare Books, ‘Orlando Furioso: Five exceptional copies, including the editio princeps’); the same buyer paid the same price, this time with Breslauer as underbidder, for Fulvio’s Illustrium imagines (Rome: Giacomo Mazzocchi, 1517), in a mid-16th century German red morocco binding decorated in Italianate style (reappeared in the sale of Jaime Ortiz-Patiño’s collection, Sotheby’s, London, 21 April 1998, lot 113). Saleroom report by Sarah Bradford, in Times Literary Supplement, 28 September 1984, p.1107. ¶ Occasional pencil annotation. Photocopy of List of prices realised and buyers’ names loosely inserted.