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Book auctions

In this video we look at book auctions.

Here are two very different kinds of auction catalogue.

  • The first dates from relatively early in the history of English auction catalogues: it is the library of a physician, Dr Francis Bernard (d. 1698).
  • The second relates to the huge sale of the Fagel collection, which was bought by Trinity College Dublin in 1802.

  • Try and find Govert Bidloo’s Anatomia Humani Corporis (Amsterdam, 1685) in both. Today, Bernard’s catalogue is searchable as a google book and this will give you a clue as to which section to search in the Fagel catalogue.
  • Comment on how the books are arranged in both catalogues.
Dr Elizabethanne Boran, Librarian, The Edward Worth Library, Dublin.
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The History of the Book in the Early Modern Period: 1450 to 1800

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