In 1816 there were several fine sales. Evans sold Edward Astle’s library, which occupied two days’ sale, and consisted of 265 lots, realising £2366; Dr. Vincent’s, Dean of Westminster, library, in six days’ sale, 1176 lots, which sold for £1390; and the library of Marshal Junot, which consisted chiefly of books printed on vellum—the 139 lots sold for £1397; but this fact by itself is misleading, insomuch that the books of more than half that value were bought in, viz., £779, making those sold amount only to £618.
Messrs. Leigh & Sotheby sold in 1816 the library of Prince Talleyrand, which was described as Bibliotheca splendissima. There were eighteen days’ sale, and the amount realised was £8399.
In this same year (1816) Mr. J. G. Cochrane sold the Gordonstoun library of Sir Robert Gordon. It contained 2421 lots, occupying twelve days in the selling, and realising £1539. This sale is specially alluded to by Mr. Hill Burton in his “Book-Hunter” as a remarkable exception to the rule that great book-sales seldom “embrace ancestral libraries accumulated in old houses from generation to generation.” This library “was begun by Sir Robert Gordon, a Morayshire laird of the time of the great civil wars of the seventeenth century. He was the author of the ‘History of the Earldom of Sutherland,’ and a man of great political as well as literary account. He laid by heaps of the pamphlets, placards, and other documents of his stormy period, and thus many a valuable morsel, which had otherwise disappeared from the world, left a representative in the Gordonstoun collection. It was increased by a later Sir Robert, who had the reputation of being a wizard. He belonged to one of those terrible clubs from which Satan is entitled to take a victim annually; but when Gordon’s turn came, he managed to get off with merely the loss of his shadow.”
William Roscoe’s fine library was also sold in 1816 by Winstanley of Liverpool. There were 1918 lots, and fourteen days’ sale, the amount realised being £5150.
It is worthy of mention that in 1817 Evans sold the library of Count Borromeo of Padua, and that the books were very fully described in the catalogue. In one instance a book which only sold for half-a-crown was described in fourteen lines. The catalogue of 324 lots occupied seventy-seven octavo pages. The total proceeds of the sale were £726.
The cataloguing of the time was not affected by this example, and it was many years before full descriptions were given in sale catalogues. M. Libri’s annotated catalogues of 1859-62 set the new fashion.
The book sales from this date become so very numerous, that it is impossible in the space at our disposal to register more than a few of the most important, and these must be recorded quite succinctly.
The sale of Edmond Malone’s library at Sotheby’s in 1818 occupied eight days, and brought £1649.
The great sale by Evans of James Bindley’s library, which was particularly rich in early English literature, was spread over several years. Part 1, December 1818, twelve days, 2250 lots, amount of sale £3046. Part 2, January 1819, twelve days, 2588 lots, amount realised £4631. Part 3, February 1819, eleven days, 2321 lots [amount not given in Evans’s sale catalogues in the British Museum.] Part 4, August 1820, books, six days, 1132 lots, amount £2253. [Part 5] omissions, January 1821, five days, 1092 lots [no totals given].
Bindley’s portraits, prints and drawings, and medals were sold by Sotheby in 1819. Part 1, Bindley Granger. Part 2, portraits. Part 3, prints and drawings. [Part 4], medals. These realised £7692.