• Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [RUTH, George Herman “Babe” (1895-1948)]. Signed photograph. Circa 1930s. 191 x 248 mm. $1,500 to $2,500.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HARRISON, Benjamin. Document signed (“Benj Harrison”) as governor of Virginia, certifying the service of Daniel Cumbo, a Black Revolutionary soldier. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: ONE OF THE FIRST PRINTED ANNOUNCEMENTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: FIRST PRINTING OF LINCOLN’S IMMORTAL GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HIGHLY IMPORTANT MORMON ARCHIVE. ALLEY, George. Archive of 23 Autograph Letters Signed by Mormon Convert George Alley to His Brother Joseph Alley. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [AVIATION]. [ARMSTRONG, Neil A.] Aviation Hall of Fame Gold Medal MS64 NGC, Awarded to Neil Armstrong in 1979. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: NEWLY DISCOVERED FIRST PRINTING OF "WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE... " FROM THE ONLY NEWSPAPER ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL PROCESSION. $4,000 to $8,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: THE MOST IMPORTANT GEORGE WASHINGTON DOCUMENT IN PRIVATE HANDS; GEORGE WASHINGTON’S COMMISSION AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF, 1775, ONE OF ONLY TWO ORIGINALS. $150,000 to $250,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: A VERY RARE ACCOUNT OF BLACKBEARD’S DEATH AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PIRATE ITEMS EXTANT. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: EDISON, Thomas. Patent for Edison’s Improvements on the Electric-Light, No. 219,628. [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Patent Office], 16 September 1879. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [VIETNAM WAR]. The original pen used by Secretary of State William P. Rogers to sign the Vietnam Peace Agreement, Paris, 27 January 1973. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: SONS OF LIBERTY FOUNDER COLONEL BARRÉ ANNOTATED TITLE-PAGE, “WHICH OUGHT TO ROUSE UP BRITISH ATTENTION”. $4,000 to $6,000.
  • Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: [Langland (William)]. The vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde time imprinted..., Roberte Crowley, 1550. £8,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: [Shakespeare (William)]. [Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies], second folio edition, [by Tho.Cotes, for Robert Allot], [1632]. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Bible, Czech Biblia Bohemica, first complete Bible printed in the Czech vernacular, Prague, August 1488. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Shabthai Tzvi.- Collection of four printed and illustrated broadsides detailing the appearance, rise and fall of the false messiah, Shabthai Tzvi, Augsburg, 1666-67. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [fourteenth century (c.1310)]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Aubrey (John). [Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme], manuscript in English, Latin and Greek, [c. 1693]. £30,000 to £50,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Poems on Various Occasions, first edition, Harriet Maltby's copy, Newark, Printed by S. & J. Ridge, 1807. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression with dust-jacket, 1937 [but 1938]. £7,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Blake (William).- Thornton (Robert John). The Pastorals of Virgil, 2 vol., engraved plates by William Blake, 1821. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: America.- Mount (William J.) & Thomas Page. The English Pilot…, [bound with] The Fourth Book, describing The West Indies Navigation from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones, 1721. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Oldfield (Henry Ambrose), Rajman Singh Chitrakar & others. An album of 160 photographs and 13 original artworks, (1833-1919), [c. 1850s-1880s]. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Audubon (John James) [and William MacGillivray]. Ornithological Biography…, 5 vol., first edition, presentation copy inscribed by Audubon, Edinburgh, 1831-49 [i.e. 1831-39]. £10,000 to £15,000.
  • Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Alken (Henry). Sporting Notions, first edition, T.McLean, 1832-33. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Bardi (Lorenzo). Nuova Raccolta delle piu interessanti Vedute della Citta di Firenze…, Florence, Lorenzo Bardi, [c.1840]. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Crawfurd (John). Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava..., first edition, 1829. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Dawe (George, engraver). The Life of a Nobleman, first edition, Geo. Henderson, [c.1825]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: [Doyle (John)], "H.B.". Political Sketches &c., 10 vol. including The Descriptive Key to H.B., Thomas McLean, [1829-51]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Eben (Adolphus Christian Frederick, Baron von) and Nicolaus Heideloff. Modèles de l'Uniforme Militaire Adopté dans l'Armée Royale de Suède, Rudolph Ackerman, 1808. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Geissler (J.G.G.) and Friedrich Hempel. Mahlerische Darstellungen der Sitten, Gebrauche und Lustbarkeiten bey den Russischen, Tartarischen…, 4 parts in 1, Leipzig and Paris, [1804]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Hunt (Charles). Portraits of Winning Horses...of the Derby, Oaks, & St. Leger, from the Year 1842 to 1849…, Rock Brothers & Payne, 1849. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Kunike (Adolf Friedrich). Zwey hundert und sechzig Donau-Ansichten nach dem Laufe des Donaustromes…, Vienna, Leopold Grund, 1826. £3,000 to £5,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Lasinio (Carlo). [Matrimony], Florence, 1790. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Reinhardt (Joseph). A Collection of Swiss Costumes, in Miniature, second English edition, James Goodwin, [1828]. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Wengen (Gottfried Durst von). Die Öffentliche Maskerade Bamberg am Fastnachts-Montage 1833…, Bamberg, [1833]. £2,000 to £3,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Winston Churchill. The Second World War. Set of First-Edition Volumes. 6,000 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: A.A. Milne, Ernest H. Shepard. A Collection of The Pooh Books. Set of First-Editions. 18,600 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Salvador Dalí, Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Finely Bound and Signed Limited Edition. 15,000 USD
    Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ian Fleming. Live and Let Die. First Edition. 9,500 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter Series. Finely Bound First Printing Set of Complete Series. 5,650 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. First Edition, First Printing. 4,200 USD

Rare Book Monthly

Articles - October - 2017 Issue

William R. Cagle, former Lilly Librarian

William R, Cagle, former Lilly Librarian

On the University of Indiana website notice of the death of William R, Cagle, former Lilly Librarian, who died in Paris last week at the age of 83, was recently posted.

 

We provide here his In Memoriam that is signed by Joel Silver.

 

All of us at the Lilly Library were saddened to learn of the passing of William R. Cagle, former Lilly Librarian, who died in Paris last week at the age of 83.  Bill worked at the Library from 1967 until his retirement in 1997, and so many of the significant books, manuscripts, and collections that are now such important parts of the Lilly Library are here because of Bill’s efforts.

 

William Cagle was born in Hollywood, California in 1933. After studies at UCLA and Oxford, and military service in the U.S. Army, he began his library career at the Huntington Library in 1960 as Assistant to the Librarian.  In 1962, he accepted the position of Librarian for English at Indiana University, and in 1967, he moved to the Lilly Library as Assistant Lilly Librarian, where he worked closely with Lilly Librarian David A. Randall, the first to serve in that position.  In 1975, following Randall’s death, Bill became Acting Librarian, and in 1977, he was named Lilly Librarian, a post that he held until his retirement in November 1997.

Bill was, above all, a bookman, and he excelled in his collection-building activities.  He greatly augmented many of the Library’s already strong collecting areas, including British, American, and French literature; American history; and voyages and travels, and he pioneered a number of new collecting subjects for the Library, including film and popular culture; cookbooks; miniature books; and modern fine bindings.  Many of the Library’s most popular and frequently-used collections, including manuscripts of Sylvia Plath, Nadine Gordimer, Ezra Pound, Orson Welles, and John Ford; the Elisabeth Ball Collection of Historical Children’s Materials; and the Gernon Collection of Historical Cookbooks, were among his many major acquisitions.

Bill also instituted a systematic standing order system for first editions of newly-published British and American literary works, which he initiated when he first arrived at the Library in 1967.  After a half-century of this broad and deep collecting activity, the Lilly Library now holds an outstanding collection of modern literature, which we are continuing to build.  Bill was also responsible for securing funds to establish fellowships for visiting scholars to make use of the Lilly Library collections, and the Everett Helm Visiting Fellowships and the Mendel Fellowships are now awarded annually to help scholars with their research in the Library’s collections.

Following Bill’s retirement in 1997, he and his wife, Terry, moved to Maine, where they lived for several years, before moving to Paris, where Bill had served in the Army in the 1950s.  Bill had long been a Francophile, and he and Terry fully enjoyed the cultural pleasures that Paris offered.  Throughout his retirement, Bill continued to be a devoted reader of booksellers’ catalogues, and his perceptive and timely recommendations helped us to fill a number of significant gaps in the Library’s holdings.

During Bill’s time at the Library, one of his great pleasures was the writing of the Annual Report of the Lilly Librarian, in which he recounted his most interesting acquisitions of the previous year.  Bill had an excellent eye for books, and he was always looking for the exceptional or special copy of any book that he wished to add to the Library’s collections. A selection of Bill’s most important acquisitions was described in A Splendid Gathering: Twenty-two Years of Collecting at the Lilly Library, 1975-1997 (Bloomington, Indiana: The Lilly Library, 1997), the exhibition assembled at the Library in honor of his retirement (this catalogue may be viewed online).

The use of the word “Splendid” in the title of A Splendid Gathering highlights Bill’s loftiest word of praise for a special book.  A particularly interesting book might be described by Bill in his Annual Report as a “splendid copy,” and an especially remarkable book might merit two instances of “splendid,” used to describe different aspects of the book. Only once, to the best of my knowledge, did Bill go beyond that, when, in the Annual Reportfor July 1987-June 1988, he described an especially notable recent acquisition.  I’ll let Bill speak for himself:

“It is always a pleasure to find a book someone has particularly asked for but rarely does it happen with quite such spectacular success as in the case of fine arts professor Louis Hawes’s request for Baron Zurlauben’s Tableaux topographiques, pittoresques, physiques, politiques, moraux, litteraries de la Suisse (Paris 1780-1786).  Professor Hawes mentioned, in the spring of 1987, that a facsimile of Zurlauben’s famous work on Swiss topography had been published and asked if the Lilly Library would purchase a copy.  We said we would prefer to look for a copy of the original.  That, he said, would be difficult and expensive, but if we could find one it would be his once-in-a-lifetime request.  Good fortune was with us, and a copy far exceeding our expectations was found in a Paris bookstore that summer.

The Tableaux topographiques was published in five large folio volumes and contains 400 engravings after drawings by the best French artists of the time.  The artists were sent to Switzerland especially to execute works for this project.  The copy acquired for the Lilly, with 278 of the engravings in unlettered proof state, belonged to Mary Boydell, niece of the celebrated London engraver and print seller John Boydell, and was bound for her in full red morocco by Deróme. It passed from Mary Boydell to the library of William Beckford and was in the Hamilton Palace sale of Beckford’s books (Sotheby catalogue, June 1882, item 668). It’s a splendid provenance for a splendid copy of a splendid work. Mr. Lilly would have approved.”

I think that Mr. Lilly would have approved of all of Bill Cagle’s acquisitions for the library that bears his family’s name, and he also would have greatly admired the passion, energy, and commitment that Bill brought to his duties as Lilly Librarian.  Bill was a splendid librarian and collection builder, and he will be greatly missed by all of us here at the Lilly Library.

Sic transit Gloria mundi

Rare Book Monthly

  • Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG BEADED JUDICIAL COLLAR. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A COMPLETE RUN OF VISIONAIRE MAGAZINE THROUGH 2010. $6,000 - $9,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: LAW REVIEW OFFPRINT SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG. $3,000 - $5,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: META REBNER'S WORKING SCRIPT OF THE LOVED ONE. $1,500 - $2,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A KATHY GROVE PORTRAIT OF CYNDI LAUPER FOR THE FEBRUARY 1989 DETAILS COVER. $800 - $1,200
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A PLASTIC COAT BY MILLIE DAVID FEATURED IN SOHO NEWS STYLE SECTION, FROM THE COLLECTION OF ANNIE FLANDERS. $500 - $700
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG JEWELRY BOX. $600 - $900
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A SET OF JONI MITCHELL LYRICS FOR "IF I HAD A HEART." $2,000 - $3,000
  • 19th Century Shop
    Catalogue 198 just published
    19th Century Shop. Darwin and Wallace, first printing of the first paper on natural selection
    19th Century Shop. Shakespeare’s Poems, first collected edition
    19th Century Shop. Walt Whitman portrait inscribed with a Leaves of Grass poem
    19th Century Shop. Major Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript notebook
    19th Century Shop. Spock's Baby Book, original MS
    19th Century Shop. Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, the great celestial atlas

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