Rare Book Monthly Articles - June - 2025 Issue

Rare Book Hub: Log in from your phone!

Rare Book Hub: Log in from your phone!

Rare Book Hub is now providing a mobile optimized version that makes it easier to use us from your phone. In some respects it’s easier to understand our complex services on the main site. Here’s what it looks like.   Here is how it works.   Wherever you are in the world, use your phone’s browser and simply type in: Rare Book Hub or rarebookhub. Whether you are a day tripper, or logging in as a paid member, you have plenty to see and do.   Our software will detect your operating system, your version, and screen size. You’ll then see our home page. Near to the top you’ll see Menu. Click...

Man Borrows 100 Books from Library and Burns Them

Man Borrows 100 Books from Library and Burns Them

This may not be the most peaceful and united of times in America, no twenty-first century version of the Era of Good Feelings. Still, a recent occurrence is symbolically more chilling than most. Bo...

Conflicting Currents in the World of Collecting

Recently there have been a bevy of handwringing articles relating to softness in the 20th century arts auctions. Sculptures and paintings have appeared to exhausted their welcome near term. Later P...

Where is the Next Generation of Book Collectors? Dolly Knows. It Starts with Readers.

Where is the Next Generation of Book Collectors? Dolly Knows. It Starts with Readers.

It is the age old question of the book collecting field – where is the new collector? It is at times a rhetorical question, more a statement of fear for the field, that books will be overwhelmed by...

FH: Lincoln's Legacy Delivers

On May 21st, Freeman | Hindman’s converted Lincoln aspirations into a memorable auction that will rank among the top ten in the collectible paper category worldwide by dollar value for 2025.  The s...

Firing of Librarian of Congress Is More Complex Than it Might Appear

Firing of Librarian of Congress Is More Complex Than it Might Appear

On May 8th the Trump administration fired Dr. Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, with a terse two line email. It first appeared that this action was just one of a barrage of attacks aimed at ...

The Rose City Book Fair Returns June 14-15

The Rose City Book Fair Returns June 14-15

Come June, it will once again be time for the annual Rose City Book Paper Fair held in the “Rose City,” Portland, Oregon. The annual book fair will once again be held at the DoubleTree at Lloyd Ce...

Basil Hall in America, the Art of Perspective

Basil Hall in America, the Art of Perspective

Basil Hall’s narrative of travels in North America (Edinburgh, 1829) is everything you’d expect from an officer of the British navy (from Scotland, though): a boring display of self-laudatory refle...

Funny Money

Funny Money

Recently I bought an appealing item on eBay that included something unexpected.   What I bought was an executed mortgage gold bond offered to those who were hoping that New Paltz, New York’s elec...

Ohio, Indiana and Michigan Offer Multiple Auction Options

Ohio, Indiana and Michigan Offer Multiple Auction Options

Far from the big name houses of NYC, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan host a lively auction trade. While these Midwestern firms seldom grab the headlines, they do offer reputable representation and a div...

Follow Up – The Library in the Middle of a National Border

Follow Up – The Library in the Middle of a National Border

In April, we wrote about the Haskell Library, a unique symbol of Canadian-American friendship for over a century. It was built right on top of the border, the main entrance being in America but the...

Arrests Made in Theft of Dead Man's Books

Arrests Made in Theft of Dead Man's Books

James Strand was something of a recluse. An elderly man without children, he lived alone in a small house in the Lents neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. He had a niece and they spoke on occasion, b...

A Census of Almost 1,000 Copies of the First Nine Editions of Hugo Grotius' De Iure Belli ac Pacis has been Published

A Census of Almost 1,000 Copies of the First Nine Editions of Hugo Grotius' De Iure Belli ac Pacis has been Published

As long as there have been societies, there has been some sort of law governing behavior within that society, written or not. Communities, then nations, and also religions, have had their own laws....

Four New Catalogues Have Been Reviewed

Four New Catalogues Have Been Reviewed

This month we review four new bookseller catalogues. Philip Salmon Company has issued their first catalogue, The Interaction of Paper. It offers books where the paper has uncommon features, such a...

Rare Book Monthly

  • Rare Book Hub is now mobile-friendly!
  • Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: These are the Times that Try Men's Souls, Thomas Paine. $80,000-$120,000
    Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: Manuscrpit from Aboard The Discovery, Signed by George Vancouver. $80,000-$120,000
    Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: Exceedingly Rare Holograph Fragment of James Cook's Logbook. $80,000-$120,000
    Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: Colonial America: The Collection of William Nesheim: Thomas Lechford: Important First-Hand Account of Life in New England. $40,000-$60,000
    Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: The First Expanded Edition of Common Sense, Thomas Paine. $30,000-$50,000
    Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: California! The Gold Rush Collection of Bruce Maclin: Album of Exceptional California Lettersheets. $20,000-$30,000
    Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: California! The Gold Rush Collection of Bruce Maclin: An Exceptional Group of Gold Rush Letters, c. 1849-1850. $20,000-$30,000
    Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: Colonial America: The Collection of William Nesheim: Mather's King Phillips War Tract 1639-1723. $15,000-$25,000
    Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: Colonial America: The Collection of William Nesheim: The First Contemporaneous Account of the Salem Witch Trials, Cotton Mather. $15,000-$25,000
    Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: Poor Richard's Almanack 1749, Benjamin Franklin. $15,000-$20,000
    Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: California! The Gold Rush Collection of Bruce Maclin: Fruits of Mormonism by Nelson Slater. $15,000-$25,000
    Bonhams, Oct. 13-23: California! The Gold Rush Collection of Bruce Maclin, Across the Plains in '49 by Emanuel Goughnour. $12,000-$18,000
  • Rare Map, Book, and Autograph Fair
    17 and 18 Oct
    Rare Map, Book, and Autograph Fair
    17 and 18 Oct
    Rare Map, Book, and Autograph Fair
    17 and 18 Oct
  • Sotheby’s
    By a Lady
    1-15 October 2025
    Sotheby’s, Oct. 1-15: Queen Elizabeth I. A queen’s defense of the realm, and the birth of the British Empire. $500,000 to $700,000.
    Sotheby’s, Oct. 1-15: Vanessa Bell — [Virginia Woolf]. An exceptional encapsulation of the Bloomsbury Group. A striking tile created by Vanesa Bell for her sister, Virginia Woolf, ca. Christmas 1926. $25,000 to $35,000.
    Sotheby’s, Oct. 1-15: Austen, Jane. A long and intimate autograph letter signed ("JA"), to Cassandra Austen. $300,000 to $400,000.
    Sotheby’s, Oct. 1-15: Austen, Jane. “Lines on Maria Beckford,” autograph manuscript signed ("Jane Austen"). $100,000 to $150,000.
    Sotheby’s, Oct. 1-15: [Austen, Jane]. Emma, the extraordinary Edgeworth-Butler copy. $250,000 to $350,000.

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