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

  • 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

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