The sale includes a cornucopia of natural history works, including the dedicatee’s large-paper copy of Brown’s Illustrations of the American ornithology (with superior colour), Gould’s marvelous monographs on hummingbirds and the birds of Great Britain, and wonderful depictions of cabinets of curiosities by Knorr and Seba.

Natural History

The superb works on architecture and gardens in this sale are a showcase of cultivated taste. Highlights include the copy of Le Brun’s Grand escalier du chateau de Versailles from the library of the Duchesse de Berry, and an early eighteenth-century architectural sammelband, containing magnificent engravings of residences both real and imagined. Also included is a copy of the first illustrated edition of Paradise Lost—containing the most famous garden in English literature.

Architecture and Gardens

The travel-related material in this collection brings us full circle around the globe, led by the Streeter copy of de Freycinet’s Voyage autour du monde, and a beautiful large-scale atlas in contemporary colour by Jaillot and Sanson. Other highlights include a deluxe copy of Hamilton’s Campi phlegraei with its striking views of Vesuvius, Melling’s volume of large-scale plates of the Near East including Constantinople, and Moore’s outstanding illustrated record of the First Anglo-Burmese War.

Travel and Atlases

This is a choice selection of incunabula from the 1470s and 1480s, tall crisp copies with hand-colouring or rubrication. Two are in contemporary German bindings, the hand-coloured Koberger Bible plausibly bound in Anton Koberger's in-house bindery. The monumental theological dictionary by Rainerius de Pisis, which unusually contains the signature of the rubricator, is bound in three volumes of red morocco attributed to Derôme.

Incunabula 

The sale contains a variety of magnificent and unusual bindings, dating from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries, and produced in a variety of European countries including Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

Fine Bindings

Head of Department | Europe

Dr. David Goldthorpe

Books and Manuscripts

William Passey

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The books in this wonderful collection represent bibliophily on its grandest scale: beautifully illustrated folio volumes on natural history, architecture and gardens, travel, and other subjects. There are also several choice incunables, including a coloured Koberger Bible, and other volumes in sumptuous period bindings.

Fine Books from a Distinguished Private Library