HistoryofScience.com Blog

Confirming that there is a disconnect between elements of the rare book market and the overall economy, the library of rare scientific books assembled by our former client, Richard Green, auctioned on June 17, met expectations by achieving a sales total of $11,019,687 including buyer's premium. New price levels were reached for the majority of items in the sale. Notable, but expected high prices included $2,210,500 for the first edition of Copernicus' De revolutionibus (1543), $194,500 for the first edition of Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), $506,500 for the first edition of Galileo's Le operazioni del compasso geometrico, et militare. (1606). There were also numerous unexpectedly high prices realized, including: $170,500 for the offprint of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage's translation of Menabrea's paper describing the theoretical operations of Babbage's never-realized Analytical Engine (1843), $170,500 for the earliest available telephone directory published in New Haven, 1878, $182,500 for the three separate issues of Turing's On Computable Numbers (1936-37). These prices included the buyer's premium.

Two works in the forthcoming auction of the library of our former client, Richard Green, are getting a lot of pre-sale publicity. The first, a superb copy of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus (1543), is hardly a surprise, as it is one of the greatest and most famous books ever published. The second is more unusual and could not be more different. It is the only surviving copy of the world's first telephone book, published in New Haven, Connecticut in 1878. When this was on the market during the 1970's interest in it was relatively slight as might seem appropriate for a work that is decidely ephemeral. Presumably current interest reflects the growing impact of electronic media--including cell phones-- in our lives.

The auction will be held at Christie's, New York on June 17 .