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Bibliologia, vol. 69
The Antiquarian Book-trade in Switzerland
Sir Thomas Phillipps's Acquisitions in the 1820s and their Later Dispersal
Angéline Rais
- Pages: approx. 450 p.
- Size:216 x 280 mm
- Illustrations:19 col., 3 tables b/w., 2 maps color
- Language(s):English
- Publication Year:2025
- € 115,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-61620-9
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- € 115,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-61621-6
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Investigating the collecting activities of Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872), the man who reputedly assembled the largest private library in the world, this publication provides an in-depth analysis of the trade in manuscripts and printed books in Switzerland, its organisation, actors, and its consequences in the twentieth century.
Subject(s)
BIO
Angéline Rais is a post-doctoral researcher for the CULTIVATE MSS Project (University of London) exploring the activities of German antiquarian booksellers between 1900 and 1945. Her research focuses on the trade in rare books and book-collecting in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She has catalogued incunabula, manuscripts, and later printed items in the Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire in Fribourg, the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris, Lambeth Palace Library in London and the Médiathèque-Valais in Sion.
Summary
Focusing on the acquisitions of c. 850 manuscripts and printed books by the celebrated English book-collector Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872) in Switzerland, this research explores the workings of the market specialising in rare books there in the first half of the nineteenth century. It seeks to understand how the trade was organised, how professional booksellers gathered and sold their stock, who else was involved in this business, what kind of books were available for sale and what they were used for, and finally what later repercussions this had on the formation of public and private libraries in the twentieth century. Adopting a methodology based on the reading of archives, the use of sale and library catalogues, and the books’ material analysis, this study argues that the Swiss book-trade was a sophisticated business in which professional and amateur dealers efficiently sold rare and modern manuscripts and printed books in shops, auction rooms, private houses, and religious institutions. Besides, Phillipps’s motives for obtaining these items, as well as those of their subsequent owners, clearly indicate that books were acquired for a variety of reasons and highly viewed for their aesthetic, historical, literary, political, and scholarly quality. Illustrating the changing values assigned to books, this publication shows why some volumes are now considered as part of the world’s cultural heritage.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes to the reader
List of abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1: Sir Thomas Phillipps’s stay in Switzerland
Chapter 2: The Swiss book-trade and the dispersal of manuscripts and early printed books, 1700–1850
Chapter 3: Sir Thomas Phillipps’s acquisitions of books in Switzerland
Chapter 4: The Swiss part of the Bibliotheca Phillippica
Chapter 5: The dispersal of Phillipps’s Swiss books
Conclusion
Appendix 1: Phillipps’s diary from 10 August 1822 to 18 September 1823
Appendix 2: Catalogue of manuscripts and fifteenth-century printed books dispersed from and within Switzerland between 1700 and 1850
Appendix 3: List of manuscripts acquired by Phillipps in Switzerland
Appendix 4: List of printed books acquired by Phillipps in Switzerland
Appendix 5: List of Phillipps’s engravings, drawings, minerals, and other antiquarian objects acquired in Switzerland
List of manuscripts cited
List of works cited
Index of people and institutions (religious communities, bookshops, libraries) mentioned
Index of Phillipps manuscript numbers
Index of incunabula
Index of authors of printed books and headings
