Rare Book Monthly

Articles - August - 2017 Issue

Summer: Searching in New York

The chance to visit New York City this past month reminded me anew that, for book collectors and those who do historical research both the New York Public Library and the New York Historical Society are exceptional resources.  My subject for research:  Abraham Tomlinson, who during the period 1840 to 1858 was an acquirer of Revolutionary War manuscripts and printings.  And the reason for personal interest in his story:  he was a once recognized and more recently a mostly forgotten acquirer/collector of material whose history has recently been illuminated by the sale of an inventory book he kept of a collection he hoped to sell to the Astor Library in 1859.  The story is complex and hardly underway but already coming together because of the extraordinary records maintained by these important institutions.

 

I wrote a story in the July issue of RBM about the Tomlinson Collection and since spent a few days in New York City to examine related files.  Here is an update and at the end of this brief article a link to my earlier story.

 

Mr. Tomlinson is long gone but records of his collecting/acquiring exploits live on in fragmentary files and references in libraries, online, and in the printed work he published in 1855: Soldier’s Journals – 1758 + 1775.  He’s an acquired taste with a name that is distinctive enough that he becomes reasonably visible when searching the right places.

 

In the RBH Transaction History for Abraham Tomlinson we have 46 records.  The most recent is an inventory of Mr. Tomlinson’s Revolutionary War manuscript and artifact collection.  I purchased it at Swann’s this year and have since then been trying to understand where his material is today.  In that pursuit I am enormously helped by notes that Radford Curdy, the great Dutchess County historian inserted, in the 1950’s or sixties, into the back of Mr. Tomlinson’s manuscript account.  Said another way, for about $3,000 I bought a wonderful puzzle.

 

So I then recently went to the New York Public Library.   I did not find any of the easily identified Tomlinson items, many, possibly most, which have the following mark:

 

Tomlinson Collection – Deposited by

Mercantile Library Association

 

 

They once did though and we know this as they have a file of seventy-two pages that relate to the Tomlinson Collection and their communications with various parties about it.  We know for instance that NYP, which had the material as an uncatalogued deposit from around 1918 to 1946, wanted to buy the collection but could not agree with the Mercantile Library on a price.

 

These records include letters to and from the Mercantile Library as well as internal memos about the material, its value and New York Public’s offers to buy it.  The material was eventually reviewed by Parke-Bernet in the mid 1940s, at the behest of the Mercantile Library, and some of it, 148 items and lots to be specific, eventually consigned to them.  We also know that some of the material appeared in a Parke-Bernet sale in 1947 but have not yet connected most of the material to other PB sales.  That will become clearer once a careful transcription of the original inventory submitted to the Astor is complete.  The handwriting though is a challenge.

 

As to the Mercantile Library, the collection’s owner from about 1860 to about 1947, they issued periodic lists of holdings but so far I have found no references to Tomlinson manuscripts or to any other manuscripts in them.  Perhaps such a publication of manuscripts was issued separately but this is only speculation.  For the moment that’s a dead end.

 

What has emerged is New York Historical Society’s relationship to the Tomlinson collection.  In their online collection there are references to holdings that include the Tomlinson/Mercantile mark and an afternoon there proved enormously valuable.  They have nineteen items with the Tomlinson mark, all of which I examined and photographed, and as importantly they listed in their records the source and date of purchase.  Deep into their 1950 records are two references to Tomlinson purchases from the Carnegie Book Shop for which they paid about $1,400.  Voila!  Another lead.   

 

The nineteen items are broadsides and documents, a category somewhat ignored by earlier generations and not one highlighted in earlier descriptions of the collection.

 

I will now try to trace the Carnegie material back to its transfer from the Mercantile Library and cannot yet say if it was at auction, then which auction or auctions, or whether it might have been by private sale.

 

When available I’ll search the Carnegie catalogues from the period 1945 to 1955 but do not yet know how these items will be described. 

 

In the meantime, we have now identified the nineteen Tomlinson items that have passed through the auction rooms and turned up in RBH records, another nineteen lots held by New York Historical, and roughly 18 that were, in the mid 1930s in the collection of Washington Headquarters in Newburgh, New York.  There will certainly be other items in the Carnegie catalogues or offer letters that will further identify material handled by this source.

 

In conclusion, I know that institutions as a general rule do not indelibly mark collectable material but this effort to reconstruct the Tomlinson collection would be infinitely more difficult, and possibly impossible without such marks so I’m grateful for them.

 

In the meantime an item with the Tomlinson mark has come up at auction and I’ve bought it.  I did so believing there won’t be many.  The collection may have a thousand parts but I’m already convinced they are mainly in institutional collections.  We’ll see. 

 

Link to article on the Tomlinson Collection.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    27th March 2025
    Forum, Mar. 27: Dürer (Albrecht) Hierin sind begriffen vier bücher von menschlicher Proportion, 4 parts in 1, first edition, Nuremberg, Hieronymus Andreae for Agnes Dürer, 1528. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum, Mar. 27: Book of Hours, Use of Rome, illuminated manuscript in Latin, on vellum, 26 fine hand-painted miniatures, 17th century dark brown morocco, [Lyon], [c. 1475 and later c. 1490-1500]. £25,000 to £35,000.
    Forum, Mar. 27: Brontë (Emily) The North Wind, watercolour, [1842]. £15,000 to £20,000.
    Forum, Mar. 27: Titanic.- Mudd (Thomas Cupper, one of the youngest victims of the sinking of the Titanic, 1895-1912) Autograph Letter signed on board RMS Titanic to his mother, April 11th 1912. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    27th March 2025
    Forum, Mar. 27: [Austen (Jane)] Emma: A Novel, 3 vol., first edition, for John Murray, 1816. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, Mar. 27: Picasso (Pablo).- Ovid. Les Metamorphoses, one of 95 copies, signed by the artist, Lausanne, Albert Skira, 1931. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, Mar. 27: America.- Ogilby (John) America: Being the Latest, and Most Accurate Description of the New World..., all maps with vibrant hand-colouring in outline, probably by an early hand, 1671. £15,000 to £25,000.
    Forum, Mar. 27: Iceland.- Geological exploration.- Bright (Dr. Richard )and Edward Bird. Collection of twenty original drawings from travels in Iceland with Henry Holland and George Mackenzie, watercolours, [1810]. £20,000 to £30,000.
  • Forum Auctions
    The Library of Barry Humphries
    26th March 2025
    Forum, Mar. 26: Beckford (William) [Vathek] An Arabian Tale, first (but unauthorised) edition, Lady Caroline Lamb's copy with her signature and notes, 1786. £2,000 to £3,000.
    Forum, Mar. 26: Baudelaire (Charles) Les Fleurs du Mal, first edition containing the 6 suppressed poems, first issue, contemporary half black morocco, Paris, 1857. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, Mar. 26: Beardsley (Aubrey).- Pope (Alexander) The Rape of the Lock, one of 25 copies on Japanese vellum, Leonard Smithers, 1896. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, Mar. 26: Douglas (Lord Alfred) Sonnets, first edition, the dedication copy, with signed presentation inscription from the author to his wife Olive Custance, The Academy, 1909. £2,000 to £3,000.
    Forum Auctions
    The Library of Barry Humphries
    26th March 2025
    Forum, Mar. 26: Crowley (Aleister) The Works..., 3 vol. in 1 (as issued)"Essay Competition" issue on India paper, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1905-07. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum, Mar. 26: Rodin (Auguste).- Mirbeau (Octave) Le Jardin des Supplices, one of 30 copies on chine with an additional suite, bound in dark purple goatskin, Paris, 1902. £3,000 to £4,000.
    Forum, Mar. 26: Pellar (Hans) Eight original book illustrations for 'Der verliebte Flamingo' [together with] a published copy of the first edition of the book, 1923. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, Mar. 26: Cretté (Georges, binder).- Louÿs (Pierre) Les Aventures du Roi Pausole, 2 vol., one of 99 copies, with 2 original drawings, superbly bound in blue goatskin, gilt, Paris, 1930. £3,000 to £4,000.
  • Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
  • Swann
    Printed & Manuscript African Americana
    March 20, 2025
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 7: Thomas Fisher, The Negro's Memorial or Abolitionist's Catechism, London, 1825. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 78: Victor H. Green, The Negro Travelers' Green Book, New York, 1958. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 99: Rosa Parks, Hand-written recollection of her first meeting with Martin Luther King Jr., autograph manuscript, Detroit, c. 1990s. $30,000 to $40,000.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 154: Frederick Douglass, Autograph statement on voting rights, signed manuscript, 1866. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 164: W.E.B. Du Bois, What the Negro Has Done for the United States and Texas, Washington, circa 1936. $3,000 to $4,000.
    Swann
    Printed & Manuscript African Americana
    March 20, 2025
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 263: Susan Paul, Memoir of James Jackson, Boston, 1835. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 267: Langston Hughes, Gypsy Ballads, signed translation of García Lorca's poetry, Madrid, 1937. $1,500 to $2,500.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 274: Malcolm X, Collection from Alex Haley's estate, 38 items, 1963-1971. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 367: Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, Auburn, NY, 1853. $2,500 to $3,500.
    Swann, Mar. 20: Lot 402: Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South, Xenia, OH, 1892. $2,000 to $3,000.
  • Koller, Mar. 26: Wit, Frederick de. Atlas. Amsterdam, de Wit, [1680]. CHF 20,000 to 30,000
    Koller, Mar. 26: Merian, Maria Sibylla. Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandelung, und sonderbare Blumennahrung. Nürnberg, 1679; Frankfurt a. M. und Leipzig, 1683. CHF 20,000 to 30,000
    Koller, Mar. 26: GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON. Faust. Ein Fragment. Von Goethe. Ächte Ausgabe. Leipzig, G. J. Göschen, 1790. CHF 7,000 to 10,000
    Koller, Mar. 26: Hieronymus. [Das hochwirdig leben der außerwoelten freünde gotes der heiligen altuaeter]. Augsburg, Johann Schönsperger d. Ä., 9. Juni 1497. CHF 40,000 to 60,000.
    Koller, Mar. 26: BIBLIA GERMANICA - Neunte deutsche Bibel. Nürnberg, A. Koberger, 17. Feb. 1483. CHF 40,000 to 60,000
    Koller, Mar. 26: HORAE B.M.V. - Stundenbuch. Lateinische Handschrift auf Pergament, Kalendarium französisch. Nordfrankreich (Rouen?). CHF 25,000 to 40,000

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