World’s Record Book Sale

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 68, 11 June 1927, Page 21 (Supplement)

World’s Record Book Sale

£643,000 for a Library

With the last knock of the hammer in the Britwell sale at Messrs. Sotheby’s, the greatest private library in England at last ceased to exist. The sale of the various portions of the library has extended over a period of 17 years, and a total of £643,234 has been realised—a world’s record. The total obtained for the Hoe library sold in New York —the next highest—was about £400,000.

More than 100 years ago, Mr. William' Henry Miller, great-grandfather of the present vendor, Mr. S. R. Christie Milder, began his collection, which in after years was famous all over the \v*>rld as the Britwell Court library. In those days it was not difficult for a discerning lover of books to secure 'treasures for trifling sums. Miller kept his library at Britwell Court, near Burnham, Buckinghamshire. Not only did he exercise great care in the choice of his books, but he kept them in perfect condition, and the good preservation of the library added enormously to its value when a section of it was«first disposed of in 1910. The British Museum has been able to secure a few rare books, but threequarters of the best of the books are now in America. Every year since 1917 there has been a Britwell Court sale at Sotheby’s. The most dramatic of all the days of these periodic sales was December 16, 1919. On this day the only known copy of an edition dated 1.799 of Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis” was bought for £15,000 by Mr. G. D. Smith, and is now in the Huntington Library, in California. In all, 108 books were sold on this occasion for the enormous total of £110,356 At the end of last month, when the present sale began, £450 was paid for one page written by Dryden and printed in 1684. £lO TO £1,550 Other high prices given for Britwell books are: £1,750 for copy of first edition in English of Boccaccio’s "Fall of Princes,” printed 1494. £1,860 for a 1632 edition of Shakespeare’s "Rape of Lucrece.” £3,400 for the "Towneley Mysteries,” a manuscript of Early English'religious plays, written about 1460 on pages of i vellum. £I,SIO for Marlowe’s Hero and Leander,” printed in 1598. £2,700 for the remains—a dozen leaves —of Henry Constable's “Diana,” sold in 1592 at the west door of St. Paul’s. The great jumps in the values of books since the Britwell Court Library was formed have-been illustrated often during the Sotheby sales. For instance, Richard Barnfield’s “Cynthia, with certaine sonnets and the Legend of Casandra,” 1595, was -bought at the i Heber library sale for £lO. When, j in 1923, Dr. Rosenbach wanted it for J America, he had to pay £1,550.