Thursday, October 23, 2014

Antiquarian Book News including a major Collection of Australian Military History going to auction

Michael Treloar Antiquarian Booksellers — Auction

2 November 2014 – Michael Treloar Antiquarian Booksellers (Adelaide)
Norwood Town Hall, 175 The Parade, Norwood SA 5067 Australia


The Stuart Braga Collection of Australian Military History
Tel: +61 8 8223 1111

This impressive single-owner collection of Australia's military history to the end of the First World War includes many scarce original battalion histories, rare printed ephemera, memorabilia, photographs, maps and artwork, with numerous items unrecorded or unique. Highlights include a lengthy run of the very rare Gallipoli journal Peninsula Press, and Norman Wilkinson's eyewitness watercolour of the landing at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, on 6 August 1915. Of the same calibre are AIF-related Cairo imprints, such as Charles Bean's virtually unknown publication, What to Know in Egypt (March 1915), and a superb panoramic colour view of the Gallipoli Peninsula by Captain Leslie Hore of the 8th Australian Light Horse Regiment (early 1916).

The supplementary catalogue of items from other vendors also includes some exceptional lots. Not least is a previously unrecorded manuscript diary of the Rabaul campaign (1914-15) kept by Harry Thomas Lambert of the AN&MEF, giving an eyewitness account of the day when the first Australians died on active service in the First World War. Another exceptional offering is a small group of highly revealing letters from Harry Chauvel from both the Boer War and the First World War, written to his brother Allan, and a further lot containing letters written to Allan Chauvel by his brother-in-law Private Charles Barnes. What Private Barnes lacks in rank he makes up for in brutal candour. Take a quick glance at our catalogue note and you will immediately understand what we mean.

Many of the 420 lots are rare and important items in their own right, and together they constitute a collection of significance. The catalogue has been compiled as an extensively annotated bibliography (not merely a sales inventory), and as such adds enormously to the scant literature on this aspect of Australia's written military history.

The link to the fully-illustrated online version of the catalogue is: www.treloarauctions.com
———————————

Haslemere Museum, Surrey

Directors at the Haslemere Museum, Surrey were given a rare facsimile copy of the Domesday Book about two years ago. It is in two volumes, complete with supporting translations from Latin and commentaries on the text.

Now the museum has been given a grant to enable the oak-covered books to be kept safely in a specially-designed and made cabinet. The cabinet is available because of a grant from the Royal Warrant Holders Charity Trust Fund.

The original Domesday Book is kept by the Public Records Office in Kew. In 1984 the historic decision was made to have it unbound and have each page copied by a special high-definition camera. The result was a very limited number of very high-definition facsimiles.
———————————

Books owned and annotated by D.H. Lawrence's
jilted lover to go under the hammer in London

A collection of annotated D.H. Lawrence biographies owned by his lover and fiancé Louie Burrows reveal a fascinating insight into the impact Lawrence had on the woman in his life and how passionately they felt about him. The books will be auctioned on Thursday 23rd October during the sale of 20th Century Books and Works on Paper at Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ Mayfair saleroom.

BloomsburyAlthough often surprisingly overlooked, Louie Burrows (1888-1962) and Lawrence had a profound effect on each other. They became friends whilst they were studying together in 1902 and eventually became engaged in 1910, a few days before the death of Lawrence’s mother. The engagement lasted until 1912, when Lawrence met Frieda Weekly, the woman who would eventually become his wife. The two eloped together to the continent that year, and his engagement to Burrows was broken off.

Although Burrows would never see Lawrence again, he clearly had a significant impact on her life. When Lawrence died in 1930, Burrows travelled twice across Europe to visit his grave in Venice. Her notes that fill the margins of The Savage Pilgrimage by Catherine Carswell and D.H. Lawrence A Personal Record by Lawrence’s highly influential lover Jessie Chambers range from those fleshing out descriptions to revealing asides on Chambers’ and Carswell’s narrative.

When Chambers describes Lawrence’s rather melodramatic response to a Sarah Bernhardt performance, (which he attended with Burrows) Burrows' comments in the margin “Was this true!” Later when Chambers describes entering a writing competition with Lawrence and a college friend, Burrows has written her  initials in the margin and then below “He gave me Tolstoy’s ‘What is Art’ as my reward” in response to Chambers saying she won a cheque for three guineas.

Her annotations in Carswell’s The Savage Pilgrimage are much more exclamatory and vexed. In the margins of Carswell’s text, Burrow’s writes “Madwoman” or “What are you getting at admit that he was incoherent” and later when discussing Lawrence’s parents; “Silly fabrication.” Elsewhere Burrows is less explicit simply adding a string of exclamation marks or crosses.

Bloomsbury
The fascinating and insightful group of annotated works will be offered in Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ 20th Century Books and Works on Paper sale and are estimated at £400-600. [Lot 454]

The 20th Century Books and Works on Paper sale will be held at Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ saleroom in London’s Mayfair on Thursday 23rd October 2014. The full catalogue is available to view and download at www.bloomsburyauctions.com

———————————

The Vatican


The Vatican Apostolic Library is now making its ancient religious manuscripts available to the world for free by putting them online via its website, However the Library is turning to crowd-funding to help it complete its work.

The Vatican Library was founded in 1451 AD and holds over 80,000 manuscripts, prints, drawings, plates and incunabula written throughout history by people of different faiths from across the world.

———————————

Thaw reveals photographer's notebook

A photographer’s notebook which had been thought to be lost for more than a century has washed out of the melting snow at Captain Scott’s hut in the Antarctic. It was left behind when George Murray Levick, a photographer, surgeon and zoologist, returned safely with the surviving members of the party after Scott and two others had died in their tent on the Ross Ice Shelf in March 1912.

To Contact Ibookcollector
Ibookcollector © is published by Rivendale Press

No comments: