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| Preview of The Library of Barry Humphries (Forum Auctions, image dd 2 March 2025) |
The catalogue is not yet available online, but a preview is provided and from certain items one is referred to similar lots, which apparently will also be in the catalogue (but are not part of the preview). For example, the edition of R.M. Rilke's Duineser Elegien in English (Cranach Presse, 1931) mentions, at the bottom of the page, some 'related lots', quite randomly however. On my first reading of the page on Duino Elegies, I was referred to three works, one of which was Daphnis and Chloe by Ricketts and Shannon - in addition to two other editions (a Gregynog edition and a German private press edition) - the second time I was shown Daphnis and Chloe as well as Hero and Leander (in addition to the same German private press edition) and these lucky coincidences never seemed to repeat themselves in the same constellation, sometimes showing no Ricketts material at all but works by the Whittington Press or Editions Narcisse, and every now and then the Duino Elegies itself can be found among the ‘related lots’.
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| Preview of The Library of Barry Humphries (Forum Auctions, image dd 2 March 2025) |
It is an effective way to tempt you to keep searching through the collection without ever knowing whether you have seen all the interesting objects.
By occasionally viewing the preview again, one is also presented with different selections. For example, a copy of Silverpoints by John Gray popped up, a copy of the ‘regular’ edition, but with a nice attachment and provenance.
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| Letter from John Gray to Elkin Mathews about Silverpoints (Forum Auctions, March 2025) |
This copy has the bookplates of Thomas Hutchison and the pre-Raphaelite collector William E. Fredeman, and, tipped in, a note by John Gray about the proofs:
This is the way these pages should be arranged - as I have numbered them - according to Mr. Ricketts. So now Mr. Leighton can proceed with the binding.
Going back and forth through the listed items I stumbled upon some other Ricketts related items, such as one of fifty large-paper copies of J.A. Symonds's In the Key of Blue and Other Prose Essays (1893) with an ink gift inscription dated January 1893, in the vellum cover designed by Ricketts, and another copy of Silverpoints (no. 219/250), a variant on Spalding paper.
