OCR Text |
Show U. S. May Obtain Rare Volumes time collecting all over the world. Dr. Rosenbach, a ruddy, healthy, looking man in his early sixties, sat puffing his pipe. A church-like quiet pervaded his library and the adjacent rooms housing one of his three collections. The others are in his Philadelphia home the city where he and his family before him have had a book business for a century, and the other at his estate at Strathmere, N. J. He led the way to the fireproof vault, about 8 by 15 feet, which contains approximately $2,500,000 worth of his rare volumes, and showed his 85 Robert Burns manuscripts manu-scripts and a partial row of John Milton manuscripts. Few persons go beyond the vault's steel door, and none goes unaccompanied. unaccom-panied. The manuscript of "Alice in Wonderland," for which he paid $77,000, and the manuscript of Dickens' Dick-ens' "Pickwick Papers" which he owns are in bank vaults. The $77,000 was the highest price ever paid for an author's manuscript; manu-script; the $106,000 he paid for the Melk copy of the Gutenberg Bible the highest ever paid for a printed book, and the $57,000 he bid for a document signed by Button Gwinnett, Gwin-nett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the highest ever paid for a signature. Great Britain Plans Sales Of Valuable Tomes to Get War Cash. NEW YORK. The man who once paid $106,000 for a book, $77,000 for a manuscript and $57,000 for a signature sig-nature believes that this country if she stays out of war will become the world's greatest treasure house of rare books. Even now, there are many rare books in this country of which there are no copies in Europe, said Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, one of the world's leading bibliophiles. And British authorities are considering con-sidering sending a number of the finest manuscripts and rare books in some of England's famous private pri-vate libraries to be placed on sale here to get American dollars for her war needs. Nothing now In British museums would be sent under the plan on which Dr. Rosenbach has been consulted. con-sulted. Britain is holding on to her national treasures, such as two Fourth century codices of the Bible, which are in the British museum, and Shakespeare's will. Boost Book Collecting. A plan to send some of her private library treasures, if carried out, would bring new impetus to book-collecting book-collecting in this country, which for the last 40 years has been the world's greatest rare-book market. There are, for example, four times more copies of the first folio of Shakespeare now in the United States than in the whole of England. A number of wealthy young American men have been coming up in recent years as book lovers and buyers who give promise of ranking with the great collectors. Dr. Rosenbach, who once wrote that "after love, book collecting is the most exhilarating sport of all," said that all over Europe, except in Switzerland, collectors have had virtually to cease their activities because be-cause of the war an even greater cessation than in the last war. A Lifetime Collector. On this side of the Atlantic, rare books are changing hands for war relief. Backed by tall book-shelves full of the treasures he has spent a life- |