Source : John Howell Books Americana

Source Title Americana - Books, Manuscripts, Maps, Prints, Photographs, Paintings - The Inventory of John Howell - Books Part I
Description Various material from the inventory of John Howell - Books.
Scope of Text "Antiquarian booksellers lead privileged lives. They are merchants, to be sure, but what merchandise they buy and sell! It is the very stuff of human life, wisdom and vanity, nobility and squalor, adventure and serenity, distilled into words and preserved on paper. A bookseller can never be lonely; his shop is always full of people (though at times he may wish more of them were in the aisles rather than on the shelf, customers rather than tenants.)

Partly no doubt from necessity but largely as a result of their own enthusiasm good booksellers are teachers. A neophyte collector will learn from bibliographies but he will learn far more by frequenting the company of the leading members of the book trade. In my thirty years as a curator I gained as much from Warren Howell and his peers as from academic historians and bibliographers. A lifetime spent with books can bring much curious knowledge to an enquiring mind, and men like Warren gladly shared that learning.

Good booksellers not only know good books, they know where they belong. There is a certain intoxication in the power to choose which collector, personal or institutional, shall have first opportunity to acquire a rare title. Every great collection owes more to booksellers than it ever had to pay in dollars on invoices submitted. Certainly the Yale Collection of Western Americana owed much to Warren. Out debt was small compared to that of his beloved Bancroft Library, but it included many choice titles. And we were only two among many collections which he helped to build.

Now his books are being dispersed at auction. The firm of John Howell - Books has ceased to exist. But long after all of us who knew Warren have disappeared, generations of scholars will have cause to be grateful to him. That is monumental enough for any bookman."

Archibald Hanna,
New Haven, Connecticut
November 1984

From the preface to the sale catalogue.
Total Records in AED 718
  • 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