Contemporary Issues in Rare Book & Manuscript Collecting
- by Announcement, Rare Book Hub staff
Spencer W. Stuart, Collections Advisor
Spencer W Stuart, Collections Advisor, to publish a handbook for Collectors and the Trade in 2023
Spencer W Stuart, Collections Advisor, is pleased to announce the publication of Contemporary Issues in Rare Book & Manuscript Collecting to be published January 2023.
Historically collecting has been a cultural practice reserved for a select few with considerable financial resources. The emerging Networked collecting ecosystem challenges this portrait as well as redefines the fundamental motivations that compel one to collect.
Contemporary Issues provides collectors and those in the Trade with detailed examinations of the economics of the structural transformations currently taking place in the world-wide market for rare books, manuscripts, prints and photographs. It examines the specific cultural transformations within the collecting ecosystem and discusses the broader social impacts of collecting in society as a whole.
To read an excerpt and pre-order the book, please head to Spencer’s website. For booksellers, the ISBN is 978-1-7387120-0-7. For any PR enquiries, please contact spencerwstuart@gmail.com, or call 604 363 1012.
Spencer W. Stuart is an experienced Collections Advisor. He works with new, expanding, mature and de-accessioning collections throughout the world both in private and institutional contexts. Spencer’s work is focused on aiding to facilitate collection development, cataloguing and de-acquisition strategies.
In tandem with his advisory work, Spencer has delivered 20+ sessions on collecting management to more than 500 collectors from 12 collecting organizations. His articles have appeared through Rare Book Hub, The Book Collector, Amphora and Manuscripts. He also occasionally appears on CBC Radio to present segments on Book History.
Spencer holds a master’s degree in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute in London, England (recipient of the Director’s Award). Upon graduation he took a position with Bonhams Auctioneers where he worked closely with the North American Rare Books and Manuscripts department in Toronto and New York.
He is an alumnus of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminars and has completed course work through the Rare Book School (University of Virginia).
If you have any further questions about the Series, please do not hesitate to contact me either by phone (604 363 1012) or by e-mail (spencerwstuart@gmail.com).
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 28th May 2026
Forum, May 28: Book of Hours.- Heures de nostre dame a l'usaige de Romme, Paris, Antoine Chappiel pour Germain Hardouin, [1504]. £6,000-8,000
Forum, May 28: Colonna (Francesco). La Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo, second edition, Venice, Sons of Aldus Manutius, 1545. £15,000-20,000
Forum, May 28:The Christ Child holding a crystal orb and surrounded by banderoles with devotional exhortations, on a leaf most probably from a Book of Hours, [Southern Netherlands, last decades of the fifteenth century]. £2,000-3,000
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 28th May 2026
Forum, May 28: Jackson (Shirley). The Haunting of Hill House, first English edition, signed presentation inscription from the author to Claude Fredericks, 1960. £2,000-3,000
Forum, May 28: Lennon (John). In His Own Write, first edition, first impression, signed by the author, 1964. £3,000-4,000
Forum, May 28: Doves Press.- Keats (John). [Poems], one of 200 copies on paper, Doves Press, 1914. £5,000-7,000
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 28th May 2026
Forum, May 28: Rodrigues (João Barbosa). Sertum Palmarum Brasiliensium, 2 vol., first and only edition, Brussels, 1903. £8,000-12,000
Forum, May 28: Newton (Sir Isaac). Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica…editio ultima, auctior et emendatior, Amsterdam, Sumptibus Societatis, 1714. £8,000-12,000
Forum, May 28: Kepler (Johannes). Ad Vitellionem paralipomena, wuibus astronomiae pars optica traditur, first edition, Frankfurt am Main, 1604. £5,000-7,000
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 28th May 2026
Forum, May 28: Tagliacozzi (Gaspare). De Curtorum Chirurgia per insitionem, libri duo, first edition, Venice, Gasparo Bindoni, 1597. £7,000-10,000
Forum, May 28: Lootsman (Jacobsz). The Lightning Colomne, or Sea-Mirrour, containing the Sea-Coasts of the Northern, Eastern and Western Navigation..., 1670. £8,000-12,000
Forum, May 28: Ribelles y Helip (José), Attributed to. An album comprising 33 finely executed watercolours of Spanish costume, bull-fighting scenes, and other genre subjects, [circa 1830]. £10,000-15,000
