Sykes, Catalogue of the splendid, curious, and extensive library..., 1824

From the Library of Christian Heuer

SYKES, SIR MARK MASTERMAN

Catalogue of the splendid, curious, and extensive library of the late Sir Mark Masterman Sykes, Bart....which will be sold by auction by Mr. Evans. W. Nicol for R.H. Evans, 1824

8vo, 3 parts in one volume, engraved portrait frontispiece, interleaved with blanks throughout, neatly annotated with prices, contemporary crimson straight-grained morocco gilt, crest of William Stirling stamped in gilt on covers, rebacked preserving original spine, all edges gilt, bookplate of William Stirling, 8vo, 1824

The agriculturalist, parliamentarian but above all great bibliophile Sir Mark Masterman Sykes (third baronet, 1771-1823) assembled one of the finest private libraries of the period at a time when "opportunity was favourable and aristocratic competition keen" (Oxford DNB). The library was very strong in Elizabethan literature and in fifteenth-century editions of the classics, with the Mainz press of Fust and Schöffer and that in Rome of Sweynheym and Pannartz well represented. Evans disposed of the library in 3700 lots over twenty-five days in this sale in May and June 1824, with an aggregate price of almost £18,000. There were many treasures, but the greatest perhaps was the only known copy on vellum of the Rome Livy of 1469, bought at the Edwards sale in 1815 for £903, and sold in the second part of the sale for £472 (28 May 1824, lot 125, with the cataloguer remarking "the celebrity of this volume could not be encreased by the most elaborate observations"). It was sold three years later at the Dent sale, by which time the bibliomania of the period "which had quickly inflated the market had as rapidly turned to bibliophobia", and it fetched just £262, acquired by Thomas Grenville, who bequeathed it to the British Museum.

PROVENANCE:

The art historian, agriculturalist, and book collector Sir William Stirling, ninth baronet (1818-1878), of Keir and Cawder, bookplate, covers with his armorial gilt crest

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