Antiquarian Book News

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Atomic Waste! – Sceptical Chymist And Rare Fragment Discovered In Binder's Waste.
Among Auction Highlights At Bonhams, London

A rare first edition of Robert Boyle’s The Sceptical Chymist was the core lot at the sale of The Library of the late Hugh Selbourne, M.D., at Bonhams, Knightsbridge on Wednesday 25th March. The Sceptical Chymist: or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes, touching the Spagyrist's Principles commonly call'd Hypostatical, as they are wont to be Propos'd and Defended by the Generality of Alchymists sold for an unprecedented £362,500. First printed in 1661, it was a conceptual breakthrough that became the cornerstone of all future study and was the catalyst that lead to our modern understanding of atomic theory. The remarkable collection, amassed over decades of careful collecting, comprised rare and exceptional texts that covered the expanse of Boyle’s theories in science, philosophy and natural history, which sold for a combined total of £425,538.

As a discerning collector of art and literature as well as science, Dr. Selbourne’s collection also included a series of letters by the eminent nineteenth century art critic John Ruskin. The extensive series written between 1857 and 1871, at the height of his fame and influence, offer a rare glimpse in to the personality of this much speculated figure. In them he writes on Turner, his bouts of madness, the difficulties he has in loving others, his mission in life and the wonder of a woman's ability to sew on buttons. Collectively the series sold for £98,237.

Also in the sale was a charming copy of Marcus Valerius Martial’s Epigrammaton libri xiiii summa diligentia castigati, which sold for £4,000. For centuries this unassuming book had concealed a very rare printed fragment of John Stanbridge's The Longe Accydence sewn in to its binder’s waste. Until the two leaves were discovered by a Specialist at Bonhams, it was thought that there was only one fragment of Stanbridge’s work still in existence. However the exact whereabouts of that piece are currently unknown making this small fragment the only located copy in the world.

The sale also set a new world record for a work by David Hume as a first edition of A Treatise of Human Nature soared to a price of £80,500.

Matthew Haley, Head of Books and Manuscripts at Bonhams, said, "Hugh Selbourne was a remarkable man who assembled one the finest private collection of books I've ever seen. The interest in the sale and the prices achieved are a testimony to his great taste and judgment."

Consignments for the forthcoming June sale are now invited. For more information please call 0207 393 3810.

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Nation saves Dickens's desk

The Charles Dickens Museum in London has been given a grant of more than £780,000 by the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) to buy the desk and chair which Dickens used in his final home, Gad’s Hill Place in Kent. At this desk he wrote  both Great Expectations and his final, unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Some furniture had been passed down through the Dickens family after the author’s death in 1870 but was auctioned for the Great Ormond Street Charitable Trust in 2004. Since then, the desk has been in private ownership and could have been sold at public auction if it had not been secured with the grant from the NHMF.

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Abraham Lincoln – the most photographed man?

Yale University's Beinecke Library has purchase more than 57,000 photographic prints this week which are mainly of President Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and American life in the 1860s. The collection comprising of books, pamphlets, maps, and theatre broadsides has been acquired from the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation.

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Ultraviolet light reveals pictures from the distant past

Researchers examining the Black Book of Carmarthen have discovered sketches hiding beneath the obvious written text. Ultraviolet light has revealed two ghostly faces and a fish. The scholars do not know who the faces represent but dated them to the 14th or 15th century The book, which is held in the National Library of Wales and dates from 1250, is the earliest surviving manuscript written solely in Welsh and contains some of the earliest references to King Arthur and Merlin. Its name comes from the colour of its binding.

As well as the drawings of the faces, another discovery is a hitherto unknown Welsh poem Experts believe the book – which contains a collection of religious and secular poetry dating from the 9th to the 12th century – was the work of a single scribe who was probably collecting and recording material over a long period. Others then made additions.

The scholars believe the book was likely to have been owned by someone called Jasper Gryffyth in the 16th century, and researchers believe that he was probably the man who erased the centuries of material added by previous owners.

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