ILAB Joins the Protest Against Amazon’s Bid to Control Top-Level Domain Names
Today, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers has joined the numerous other organizations, such as the Authors Guild or the American Association of Publishers, objecting to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN’s) plan to sell top-level domains to private companies. Online retail giant Amazon has bid to be the exclusive custodian of .book, .author and .read domains. Read more ...
Paris 2014 - 41st ILAB Congress
The ILAB and SLAM committees are very pleased to announce that the 41st ILAB Congress will run in Paris from the 13th to 16th April, 2014, to coincide with the 100th anniversary of SLAM. The Paris Congress will immediately follow the International Antiquarian Book Fair at the Grand Palais scheduled from 10th to 13th of April 2014. We hope that the very special program that we have planned will attract numerous visitors to Paris and we are looking forward to meeting our new colleagues and welcoming old friends.
Anne Lamort, President SLAM, Tom Congalton, President ILAB
16th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography
The 16th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography will be awarded in 2014 to one or more books about books published in any language and in any part of the world between 2009 and 2012. Publishers, librarians, collectors, antiquarian booksellers and all book lovers are very welcome to submit books to the prize until the end of April 2013 by sending a single copy to the Prize Secretary.
Support scholarship! Submit books to the most prestigious prize until April 2013!
The World’s Expert Antiquarian Booksellers - In 1 Book!
The new edition of the ILAB Directory contains all names, addresses and specialities of the ILAB dealers who are organized in 22 national associations and who are located in 32 countries all over the world. Have a look!
“Book collecting is and almost always has been a vibrant, exciting and engaging pastime"
"It’s our job to make others understand that.” An interview with ILAB President Tom Congalton about his career, his favourite books, Between the Covers, collecting, ILAB and the future of the trade. Read it!
ILAB Booksellers on Video
"A wonderful snapshot of the rich history of both the ABAA and the rare book trade" - ILAB is proud to present the video archive project by Michael Ginsberg and Taylor Bowie. Recently added: interviews with two amazing ladies: Marguerite Goldschmidt and Florence Shay.
"Out of the classroom and into the world" - ILAB Internships
ILAB has launched an internship program for young antiquarian book dealers. Alena Lavrenova, Anastasya Zhikhareva, and other young antiquarian booksellers from Russia, spent several weeks in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and the United States. Read their exciting reports and join our new Facebook Group!
The World's Best Booksellers Met in Switzerland
From 22 to 26 September the presidents of 22 national antiquarian booksellers' associations and rare book dealers from all over the world met for their 40th Congress in Lucerne. Besides the meetings and elections on Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday, they climbed high mountains and dark caves and visited Switzerland's most outstanding museums and private collections. Read the online diary!
Old and Rare Books. From ILAB: the one stop FREE App for all lovers of rare books
The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) has launched an ILAB Moile App which is now available in the Apple Store and the Android Market. Search for “ILAB rare books” or “International League of Antiquarian Booksellers” to find the free App ready to install on your phone.
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Book FairsRare Books - Next Fairs
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08 Jun 2013 - 09 Jun 2013
The largest Antique Map Fair in Europe, established 1980, brings together around 40 of the leading national and international antiquarian map dealers as well as hundreds of visiting dealers,... [+] More
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09 Jun 2013
Dealers from the UK and abroad offer fine bindings, antiquarian, illustrated books, travel, modern firsts, children’s books, maps, prints, and ephemera. [+] More
EventsRare Books - Next Events
BooksellersAntiquarian Booksellers
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Varia Opera Mathematica...accesserunt selectae quaedam eiusdem Epistolae, vel...
FERMAT, Pierre de
Bookseller: Jonathan A. Hill, Bookseller, Inc.
Woodcut vignette on title, two engraved headpieces, five folding engraved plates, & woodcut diagrams in the text. 6 p.l., 210, [3] pp. Folio,... MoreWoodcut vignette on title, two engraved headpieces, five folding engraved plates, & woodcut diagrams in the text. 6 p.l., 210, [3] pp. Folio, early 19th-cent. half red morocco & red boards (minor browning), flat spine gilt. Toulouse: J. Pech, 1679. First edition, and now rare on the market; this copy belonged to Dominique Fran?s Jean Arago (1786-1853), the great French scientist who made important contributions to astronomy, electro-magnetism, and optics (see D.S.B., I, pp. 200-03). This book, Fermat's only substantial publication apart from his edition of Diophantus (both prepared and published posthumously by his son), contains the majority of Fermat's mathematical work. Included are Fermat's important researches on analytic geometry, developed concurrently with, but independently of, Descartes, as well as his method of maxima and minima, based upon which some have proclaimed Fermat the true first discoverer of the differential calculus. It also includes the first printing of Fermat's important correspondence with Pascal which founded the modern theory of probability. There is also correspondence with other contemporary mathematicians, including Mersenne, Roberval, Wallis, Digby, and Gassendi. Although Fermat published practically nothing during his lifetime, his work was freely communicated to others in correspondence and was profoundly influential. Descartes and Pascal notwithstanding, many scholars regard Fermat as the greatest of all 17th-century French mathematicians. Fermat (1601-65), was shy of publicity and reluctant to communicate his findings. As a result, his discoveries remained comparatively unappreciated until the 19th century when they catalyzed the development of modern algebra. The title-page is in Horblit's second state (no preference), while leaves a2 and e2 are in his first state (no preference). The rare portrait of Fermat, not present here, was also not found in the Horblit, Honeyman, or Norman copies. A small minority of copies have the portrait; it was printed in a much larger format than the book and was probably intended only for large paper copies, of which a few survive (e.g. one of the two BL copies). A very good and crisp copy. With the signature of Arago on the title-page (his sale, Paris, 1854, lot 824 "in-f. dem. m. r.") and with a slightly later note of an English collector "From the Library of F. Arago, H.S." ❧ Dibner, Heralds of Science, 108-"The above, published after his death, first presented his work and correspondence." En Fran?s dans le Texte 115. Evans, Exhibition of First Editions of Epochal Achievements in the History of Science (1934), 6. Horblit 30-"Fermat is considered the father of the modern theory of numbers, and herald of differential calculus and analytical geometry." . Less
Price: 150000.00 USD
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THE BIRDS OF AMERICA
Audubon, John James:
Bookseller: William Reese Company - Americana
New York & Amsterdam: Printed in Holland for the Johnson Reprint Corporation and Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1971-1972.. Four volumes. Limitation... MoreNew York & Amsterdam: Printed in Holland for the Johnson Reprint Corporation and Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1971-1972.. Four volumes. Limitation leaf printed recto only in black, 4 general titles, 4 volume titles, 4 printed facsimiles of the original titles. 435 plates, printed in up to eight colors, after John James Audubon. Double elephant folio. Original brown half calf over green cloth-covered boards, upper covers with inset brown in calf panel lettered in gilt with author and title, the flat spines lettered in gilt with author, title and volume number. Leather somewhat scuffed, internally fine. The "Amsterdam Audubon" was limited to only 250 copies. A viable alternative to the original Havell edition, and one of only two full-size facsimile editions of the complete work ever published. In October 1971, employing the most faithful printing method available, the best materials and the ablest craftsmen of their age, the Amsterdam firm of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd., in conjunction with the Johnson Reprint Corporation of New York, set out to produce the finest possible limited edition facsimile of the greatest bird book ever printed: the Havell edition of John James Audubon's well-loved BIRDS OF AMERICA. The Teyler Museum in Haarlem, Holland made their copy of the original work available for use as a model. The Museum had bought their copy through Audubon's son as part of the original subscription in 1839. After long deliberation, the extremely complex but highly accurate process of color photo-lithography was chosen as the most appropriate printing method. The best exponents of this art were the renowned Dutch printing firm of NV Fotolitho Inrichting Drommel at Zandvoort who were willing to undertake the task of printing each plate in up to eight different colors. The original Havell edition was published on handmade rag paper and the publishers were determined that the paper of their edition should match the original. Unhappy with the commercially available papers, they turned to the traditional paper manufacturers G. Schut & Zonen (founded in 1625), who, using 100% unbleached cotton rags, were able to produce a wove paper of the highest quality, with each sheet bearing a watermark unique to the edition: G. Schut & Zonen [JR monogram] Audubon [OT monogram]. The publishers and their dedicated team completed their task late in 1972 and the results of these labors became known as the "Amsterdam Audubon." 250 copies were published and sold by subscription, with the plates available bound or unbound. Given all this careful preparation, it is not surprising that the prints have the look and feel of the original Havell edition. The Havell edition was expensive at the time of publication and this has not changed. The last complete copy to appear on the market sold for more than $10,000,000 in London in 2010, and the increasingly rare individual plates from this edition, when they do appear, generally sell for between $2,500 and $150,000 depending on the image. The quality of the Amsterdam Audubon plates is apparent to any discerning collector and it is becoming ever clearer that they offer the most attractive alternative to the Havell edition plates, given the latter's spiraling prices. The idea for his great work came to Audubon after his meeting with the distinguished ornithologist Alexander Wilson at Louisville in 1810, but it was not until 1826 that he felt ready to set sail for England in search of a publisher. In the intervening sixteen years he had time both to perfect his style of drawing from specimens mounted on wires as an aid to composition, to assemble a remarkable portfolio of drawings, and, perhaps most importantly, to develop the single-minded determination that was to be so essential in his efforts to realize his ambition. John James Audubon, the illegitimate son of French sea captain Jean Audubon and Mlle Jeannne Rabin, his Creole mistress, was born in Les Cayes, Santo Domingo on April 26, 1785. His mother died soon after his birth and in 1791, Audubon was brought back to France to live at Nantes under the care of his father's wife, Anne Moynet. The arrangement was evidently a happy one, and both Audubon and his half-sister (Jean's illegitimate daughter by another mistress) were legally adopted in 1794. Audubon later wrote that he quickly came to both love and admire his adopted mother, though her indulgence of his preference for exploring the surrounding countryside to attending to his schoolwork, was perhaps largely responsible for his lack of formal education. Audubon's first arrival in America was in 1803, when, following the loss of the family's fortune in Santo Domingo, his father dispatched him to eastern Pennsylvania. He was to stay with a Quaker lawyer, Miers Fisher, who had been acting as Audubon senior's business agent, and represent the family's interests in the development of the lead deposits which had been found on Mill Grove (a farm near Philadelphia, which had been bought, sight unseen, by Audubon's father). It was here that his early interest in drawing bird specimens grew, and here that he met and married (in 1808) Lucy Bakewell, the daughter of a neighbor. They set up home firstly in Louisville, and later Henderson, Kentucky. The new species of birds to be found in the virgin wilderness of Kentucky supplied Audubon with a large number of subjects to both draw and hunt, and allowed him to develop the lifelike action-packed ornithological images that were to become the hallmark of his work. Following his bankruptcy in 1820, Audubon decided to concentrate on his painting, and he set out for Louisiana with the intention of adding to the tally of species captured in his portfolio. During this period he worked as a traveling artist and drawing instructor, drawing birds from Mississippi as well as Louisiana and eventually settling with Lucy near New Orleans at a plantation called Bayou Sara. By 1824 Audubon's plans for THE BIRDS OF AMERICA were coalescing. The work was to be issued in eighty parts of five plates per part, for a total of 400 plates (this was finally expanded to 435 showing some 1,065 different species in eighty-seven parts) on large format paper: this was dictated by Audubon's determination that all the known species were to be shown, and that they should all be life-size. After unsuccessful attempts to get the work published in both Philadelphia and New York, in became clear that the only hope of publication lay in Europe, and Audubon sailed for England in 1826. In England Audubon arranged a number of successful exhibitions of his drawings, where the "dramatic impact of his ambitious, complex pictures and a romantic image as 'the American woodsman' secured Audubon entry into a scientific community much preoccupied with little-known lands." Amongst the friends he made from this community, were William Swainson, a gifted ornithologist, who taught Audubon the niceties of technical ornithology, William MacGillivray, a brilliant Scottish naturalist-anatomist, who, later, was to contribute to and edit Audubon's ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY, and Patrick Neill, printer and zoologist, who recommended William Home Lizars of Edinburgh as an engraver who would do justice to Audubon's work. Lizars was so impressed with Audubon's work that he agreed to put aside the work he was doing for Prideaux John Selby and Sir William Jardine, Britain's foremost ornithologists of the time, and concentrate on the engraving and printing of Audubon's subjects. Lizars' involvement in the project began in 1827, but turned out to be short-lived: after producing only ten plates, all of which are represented in the present selection, Lizars' colorists went on strike and Audubon was forced to find another engraver. This setback proved to be only temporary, however, and Audubon quickly established an excellent working and personal relationship with both Robert Havell, senior, and his son, Robert Havell, junior. Havell senior died in 1832, but between 1828 and 1838 Havell junior was involved as engraver (or in the case of the Havell plates as re-toucher) of all 425 of the images that go to make up the highest achievement of ornithological art and the greatest of all bird books. Less
Price: 80000.00 USD
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A Map of the British Empire in America with the French and Spanish...
POPPLE, Henry (d.1743)
Bookseller: Donald Heald Rare Books
London: "Engrav'd by Willm. Henry Toms", "1733" [but circa 1735]. Folio. (20 1/2 x 15 inches). Engraved map by William Henry Toms, with very fine... MoreLondon: "Engrav'd by Willm. Henry Toms", "1733" [but circa 1735]. Folio. (20 1/2 x 15 inches). Engraved map by William Henry Toms, with very fine full contemporary hand-colouring (with twenty-two integral inset views and plans) on 15 double-page and 5 single-page sheets, with full contemporary hand-colouring, mounted on guards throughout, with the double-page key map by Toms, hand-coloured in outline. With the Contents leaf, laid in. Expertly bound to style in half 18th-century russia over original 18th- century coated paper-covered boards, spine gilt with red morocco spine label, modern blue morocco-backed cloth box, titled in gilt on the 'spine'. A monument to 18th-century American cartography: a highly attractive fully-coloured copy of the first large-scale map of North America, and the first printed map to show the thirteen colonies. Popple maps with full contemporary colour are exceedingly rare, we have handled only one other copy, and the only other comparable example to have appeared at auction in the past thirty years is the Siebert/Freilich copy. Popple produced this map under the auspices of the Lord Commissioners of Trade and Plantations to help settle disputes arising from the rival expansion of English, Spanish and French colonies. "France claimed not only Canada, but also territories drained by the Mississippi and it's tributaries - in practical terms, an area of half a continent" (Goss The Mapping Of North America p.122.) The present copy of Popple's map, with its full contemporary hand-colouring, would have been particularly useful in these disputes. Mark Babinski in his masterly monograph on this map notes that 'The typical coloring of fully colored copies ... is described best by a contemporary manuscript legend on the end-paper affixing the Key map to the binding in the King George III copy at the British Library: "Green - Indian Countrys. Red - English. Yellow - Spanish. Blue - French. Purple - Dutch." The careful demarcation of the disputed areas by colour would have made the identification of whether a particular location was in one or another 'zone' a great deal easier. Thus the colouring adds a whole new dimension to a map that is usually only seen in its uncoloured state, and perhaps suggests that the copies with full hand-colouring were originally produced for some as-yet-unrediscovered official use to do with the international land disputes of the time. Benjamin Franklin, on May 22, 1746, ordered two copies of this map, "one bound the other in sheets," for the Pennsylvania Assembly. It was the only map of sufficient size and grandeur available - and the map is on a grand scale: if actually assembled it would result in a rectangle over eight feet square. Its coverage extends from the Grand Banks off Newfoundland to about ten degrees west of Lake Superior, and from the Great Lakes to the north coast of South America. Several of the sections are illustrated with handsome pictorial insets, including views of New York City, Niagara Falls, Mexico City, and Quebec, and inset maps of Boston, Charles-Town, Providence, Bermuda, and a number of others. "Little is known of Henry Popple except that he came from a family whose members had served the Board of Trade and Plantations for three generations, a connection that must have been a factor in his undertaking the map, his only known cartographic work" (McCorkle America Emergent 21.) Babinski has made a detailed study of the issues and states of the Popple map. This copy is in Babinski's state 5: the imprint on sheet 20 reads "London Engrav'd by Willm. Henry Toms 1733", and sheet one includes the engraved figure "1" in the upper left corner just above the intersection of the two neat lines. The small format table of contents is not present, but according to Babinski this is not unusual, indeed it was the case with two thirds of the copies examined. The key map is in Babinski's state 1, with only Toms' name below the border at the bottom and no additional place names in the 17 small insets. This copy also notable for containing the very rare Contents leaf, titled "The Contents of each Sheet of the Twenty Plates of Mr. Popple's Map of America." We have handled only one other copy of the map complete with this ephemeral addition. Mark Babinski Henry Popple's 1733 map (New Jersey, 1998) (ref); Brown Early Maps of the Ohio Valley 14; cf. Cumming The Southeast in Early Maps 216, 217; Degrees of Latitude 24, state 4 (but with engraved number to sheet 1); E. McSherry Fowble Two Centuries of Prints in America 1680-1880 (1987), 6, 7; cf. John Goss The Mapping of North America (1990) 55 (key map only); Graff 3322; Howes P481, "b"; Lowery 337 & 338; McCorkle America Emergent 21; Phillips Maps p.569; Sabin 64140; Schwartz & Ehrenberg p.151; Streeter Sale 676; Stephenson & McKee Virginia in Maps, map II-18A-B. Less
Price: 275000.00 USD
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TO THE HONOURABLE THOMAS PENN AND RICHARD PENN ESQRS. TRUE & ABSOLUTE...
Scull, Nicholas:
Bookseller: William Reese Company - Americana
Philadelphia. 1759.. Engraved map on six sheets, joined as three. Sheet size: 3 sheets, each approximately 31 x 21 1/2 inches. Excellent condition,... MorePhiladelphia. 1759.. Engraved map on six sheets, joined as three. Sheet size: 3 sheets, each approximately 31 x 21 1/2 inches. Excellent condition, with three short repaired tears, very minor age toning at the sheet edges, overall in remarkable unsophisticated condition. Provenance: Laird U. Park (Sotheby's New York, Nov. 29, 2000, lot 322). The first map of Pennsylvania to be published in America. Scull (1687-1761) was born in Philadelphia and is thought to have been apprenticed at a young age to William Penn's surveyor, Thomas Holme. In 1719 he became deputy surveyor of Philadelphia County, eventually ascending to the surveyor generalship of Pennsylvania in 1748. An original member of Benjamin Franklins Junto, Scull was intimately involved with Indian relations of the period, having travelled amongst the tribes surveying the western counties. Siding with the Proprietors in his recollection of the Walking Purchase, at which he was present, no doubt held him in good standing with the Penn family. It is thought that this, in part, led to the publication of this impressive map. Dedicated to the Proprietors, it is among the largest and finest maps produced in America to that date. The map depicts Philadelphia, Bucks, Northampton, Berks, Chester, Lancaster, Cumberland, and York Counties, and is based on Sculls own surveys as well as the reports of Major Joseph Shippen, Colonel John Armstrong, John Watson, Benjamin Lightfoot, and others. In addition, some information was gleaned from printed sources, including Fry-Jefferson's important map, evidenced by a printed footnote on the map concerning the location of Fort Cumberland and the Maryland- Pennsylvania border. Elevation is accurately depicted, much in the style of Fry-Jefferson, by neat hachure marks. The eastern counties include a wealth of detail, such as churches, meeting houses, inns, iron forges, mills, and the manors of significant residents; roads, Indian paths, Indian towns, and forts are clearly shown throughout. Although generally quite accurate, it is curious that Scull included Fort Granville on his map, which had been destroyed by the French and Delaware Indians in 1756. Nevertheless, the importance and accuracy of this large-scale map is underscored by the fact that a copy of it was among the maps hung by the Board of War at Philadelphia in August 1776, twenty years after the map's publication (as listed by John Adams in his letter to his wife dated Aug. 13, 1776). The map was engraved by James Turner (d. 1759), a Philadelphia silversmith and prot? of Benjamin Franklin. Turner had previously worked on map engraving during the production of James Parker's 1747 maps of New Jersey, a project for which he had been recommended by Franklin. Little is known about the printer, John Davis. Although he had no shop, he appears to have specialized in large copperplate engravings of maps, as he is the printer identified in the imprint of the 1756 Philadelphia first edition of Joshua Fisher's important chart of Delaware Bay. That map and the present one are his only known works. Scull's 1759 map of Pennsylvania is very rare, with less than a dozen known institutional copies. Only a few have appeared at auction in the last half century, most notably in the sales of the collections of Thomas W. Streeter, Howard E. Welsh, and Laird U. Park (this copy). EBERSTADT 167:430 (quoting Wroth). EVANS 8489. Garrison, "Cartography of Pennsylvania before 1800" in PMHB, Vol. 59, no. 3. PHILLIPS, p.673. RISTOW, pp.52-53. STREETER SALE 965. WHEAT & BRUN 422. Less
Price: 185000.00 USD
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Browse the treasures of the Bavarian State Library with your iPhone: the "Nibelungenlied", the Gutenberg Bible, rare manuscripts from the Orient and the Occident. The first iPhone App for book lovers. [+] More
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Sandburg material is sought by collectors of poetry, and for his excellent biography of Abraham Lincoln. While the prices of his books tend to be modest ... [+] More
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A collecting tip for all who are interested in the history of society and culture: Marie C. Hansen has published a list of the most important works on feminist theory and feminist thought. From Mary Wollstonecraft to Virginia Woolf to Simone Beauvoir to "Mad Man". Some snippets: [+] More
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Sheikh Mansur was a Chechen resistance fighter who waged a six-year campaign against Catherine the Great’s forces before his capture in 1791, calling upon fellow Muslims to join him in jihad. ‘He was the first to preach and lead … the Holy War against the infidel Russians in the Caucasus … Dropped, as it were, from the clouds full grown, a warrior, preacher and prophet and, in spite of [his] many failures … he drew after him now one, now another, of the the fierce tribes of the mountain and the forest … He it was who first taught them that in religious reform lay the one chance of preserving their cherished liberty and independence’ (Baddeley, The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus, p. 47). [+] More
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Specialists on 17th century books and book arts may enjoy viewing Maureen E. Mulvihill's illustrated exhibition review of the Rubens show at the Ringling Museum, Sarasota, Florida (February 17th-June 3rd, 2012). The review (12 pp, with a Gallery of Images from the installation) is published in Seventeenth-Century News (Spring-Summer, 2012). The Ringling's permanent collection includes five Rubens canvases (the Louvre, two). The show presents selections from Ringling's Rubens collection and many fine prints of the master's work (engravings, woodcuts) on loan from the Royal Museum of Fine Art, Antwerp [+] More
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Tardily other countries followed the British example and, by the time the Second World War ended, there were associations in France, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Finland. Many of the countries concerned endured the rigours of enemy occupation; all had after war problems, not the least of which was the treatment of members who had collaborated with the enemy. But there were also problems of exchange control and the regulation of imports and exports, which were new to most European countries. In 1947, therefore, the Dutch association took the initiative by approaching the British, as the senior body, with the suggestion that an international conference should be called, that invitations should be extended to all those countries in which an Association of Antiquarian Booksellers existed, and that delegates should submit the many problems that beset them to a general discussion. The Dutch offered the conference a home in Amsterdam and, in September, 1947, the representatives of nine countries gathered, under the chairmanship of the British president, for the first international conference ever held by the antiquarian book trade. The delegates were unanimous in their desire for the formation of an international body and the British association – the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association (International) – was entrusted with the task of calling together the presidents of the respective associations to draft a constitution. [+] More
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