The dispersal of the libraries

Victorian churchmen assembled them; now their heirs are selling them off:

The sale of a 63-volume Bible for £55,000 in December 2006 was a thumping great clue in a detective trail to a scandal over which church people are still fuming. . .

That Bible came from the same source as other old books sold by Sotheby's in June last year, which fetched £400,000. One was the great Complutensian Polyglot, printed for Cardinal Ximenes in 1520.

That is a proper Bible to be sure, with parallel texts in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Syriac. Cranmer bought a copy. But this one, which fetched £69,000, bore the stamp of the Bishop Phillpotts Library in Truro.

It turned out that hundreds of old books from the library had been sold, for £36,000. What annoyed churchy people was that the dealer who bought them sold them on for more than half a million.

The bigger issue, though, is what is to be done with clerical libraries that are unused and neglected? It is sad to see such collections sold off, yet how much can the established public libraries of Britain afford to spend to acquire them in toto? Spotted via PalaeoJudaica.

Posted by David on December 2, 2008 9:44 PM