18-09-2017, 07:20 AM
(17-09-2017, 02:36 PM)voynichbombe wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is about antiquarian book auctioning in the timeframe Wilfried was active in. I know very little about auctions in general, and historic antiquarian book auctions specially. The Schoenberg Insitute Database of pre-modern Manuscripts, which is basically a huge and growing collection of entries from all sorts of auction catalogues has an entry about Wilfried Voynich:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I may be mistaken, but Wilfrieds record struck me a bit strange, if compared to that of H.P. Kraus's (which maybe invalid
due to the timeframe, so if you'd know any other seller or agent more fitting to compare to, I'd be very glad for a hint).
While Voynich is listed in provenance records probably referring to prior direct sale transactions 388 times, he is listed as selling agent 70 times, only 1 time as a buyer, and ZERO times as a seller.
Does this indicate he didn't own the books he brought to auction, none of them? Does it seem possible to find out about the owner(s)? Also the list of _different individual buyers seems rather short.
The Schoenberg database is only concerned with manuscripts.
That Voynich should forever be associated with a medieval MS is somewhat ironic, since his interest has always been for early printed books. He only became interested in manuscripts at a later stage in his book-selling career. His relatively low "score" in the Schoenberg database is inevitably the result of this.
One can read about his interactions with other book sellers, and his participation in auctions, in several published works about Voynich, primarily:
- Sowerby, E. Millicent: Rare People and Rare Books. London, Constable, 1967.
- Hunt, Arnold: Voynich, The Buyer in: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., pp. 11-21.