![]() ![]() If you’d like to know what else was in Currer’s library, you’ll have to spend a bit more for a copy of the 1833 second catalogue she issued of her collection ($7,500, Jonathan Hill Rare Books, Booth B15).Įstelle Doheny (1856–1935) built her collection–just under ten thousand books and manuscripts–from scratch. Currer’s copy of The Comedies of Aristophanes (1820, 1822) with her engraved bookplate is on sale at the fair ($1,250, Honey and Wax Booksellers, Booth E9). Dispersed at Sotheby’s in 1862, pieces of that collection still appear on the market. Many historic collections are in evidence at this year’s book fair. Here are just a few examples:įrances Mary Richardson Currer (1785–1861) amassed twenty thousand volumes in her lifetime, partially through inheritance but primarily through devotion and insight. DaSilva appreciates these physical objects and their back stories as opportunities to “humanize our gods.” She found a book at Athena (an inscribed volume of Nietzsche) she wanted to “take home and hug.” This is how young collectors are born. Of psychoanalyst and author Lou Andreas-Salomé, she writes, “It is all too easy to define her by the men she entranced.” Andreas-Salomé was Rilke’s lover, the object of Nietzsche’s persistent affection, and Freud’s first female student of psychoanalysis, but her works reveal her revolutionary independence. William Schaberg’s seventeen-year-old assistant and protégée, Lucy Rose DaSilva, wrote more than half the catalogue. Others are less well-known, such as Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678), the first woman to attend a European university (she sat behind a curtain, out of view of the men). She is one of the nearly two dozen female “intellectuals of the first order” showcased by Athena Rare Books, which is run by seller William Schaberg (most editions range in the three to four figures Booth D19).Īthena’s catalogue of “Women Philosophers” includes household names like Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Simone de Beauvoir. Harriet Taylor Mill was the wife of John Stuart Mill and the uncredited coauthor of his foundational book On the Subjection of Women. ![]() This is the only known copy of the earliest obtainable printing of Washington’s letter ($125,000, Seth Kaller, Booth A40).Ģ) Harriet Taylor Mill and Twenty-Two Other “Women Philosophers”: For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. Washington’s letter in response, published in the Newport Mercury that September, not only echoed Seixas’s sentiments but also employed much of his rhetoric (indicated below with italics): On August 18, 1790, on behalf of the Newport Jewish congregation (then numbering about three hundred), Moses Seixas welcomed George Washington, expressing support for his administration and hope for his advocacy of religious freedom. Here is a deeper look at some of the unique items on view at the fair: There are also far stranger items, such as the “first salad monograph,” an instructional needlepoint from Shakespeare, and a shooting script from the Kurosawa classic Yojimbo. Some of the items on display include Shakespeare folios and quartos and ephemera, Einstein’s Bible and his letter on “God’s secrets,” a manuscript poem by Jane Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s copy of the Odyssey, and the four-million-dollar Hamilton Collection, complete with a lock of his hair. The fifty-eighth New York Antiquarian Book Fair, organized by the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America ( ABAA) and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers ( ILAB), opened March 8 at the Park Avenue Armory and runs through Sunday. ![]()
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