BOOKS OF CAXTON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1938, Page 7

BOOKS OF CAXTON

SURPRISES AT A SALE So that his little son, the ill-fated Prince of Wales, should “begynne to lerne rede Englissh,” Edward IV. commanded Caxton to translate from the French Raoul le Fevre’s story of the Golden Fleece. Accordingly at Westminster, in 1476, the “History of Jason”, was published, writes A. C. R. Carter in the “Daily Telegraph and Morning Post.” Only two copies of this issue have survived in perfect state. The Ham House example has been offered at Sotheby’s and, after some quick-fire bidding, was secured by Mr Ernest Maggs at £2,400. He was prepared to pay a much higher price and was surprised at the moderation of his last opponent. The only other perfect copy fetched as much as £2,100 forty-one years ago, in the Ashburnham sale, when it joined the Pierpont Morgan library. The price for it in 1776 was only £5 10s. Messrs Quaritch succeeded in the contest for another famous Caxton, giving £2,400 for the 1489 “Governayle of Helthe,” earliest medical work printed in the English language. The second title of this very rare book speaks for itself. —“Medicina Stomachi.” One of the surprises of the day was the purchase by Messrs Quaritch for only £560 of Stephen Hawe’s “Pastime of Pleasure,” 1509, and his “Comfort of Lovers,” 1511, from the press of Caxton’s successor, Wynkyn de Worde. As each of these is the only copy known it will not be surprising if the bargains go eventually to the British Museum. Occasionally Mr Rham, the agent of the Rosenbachs, was prominent, winning, for examfple, the Caxton “Polychronicon,”' 1482, at £550. But today America lacks book-lovers of the calibre of Pierpont Morgan, Henry Huntington, and young Harry Widener, who went down in the Titanic. Despite the fact that the two days’ sale totalled £18,500, this sum would have been much exceeded in less unsettled times. One hopeful sign was that a French collector, Mr Arthur Rau, of Paris, paid as much as £1250 for that beautifully illuminated book in vellum by Antoine Verard, 1500, the “Hortus Sanitatis,” which he executed for our Henry VII. for £lO of Tudor money.