Bible sells for $405,000

Press, 5 December 1986, Page 32

Bible sells for $405,000

By

HUGH BARLOW

NZPA staff correspondent London How times change. A copy of a “poor man’s Bible” has sold for £148,000 ($405,000) at Sotheby’s. The illustrated Dutch Bible, dating from about 1460, gained its name from the printing method. Each page was printed in one block, rather than by using the more expensive movable type. It was sold to a German dealer, Sotheby’s said.

Although the condition of the working classes in England has improved since Friedrich Engels wrote a book of that title last century, not many members of the working class would have been able to afford the £1760 that a first edition sold for. The book, in German, bore an inscription from Engels to Jenny Marx, the daughter of his collaborator, Karl Marx. A rare lot which failed

to attract a buyer was nine issues of the first “Izvestia” newspaper. The present Soviet daily newspaper is the third to use the name, which is Russian for “news.” The original Izvestia was published by an anonymous group in Petrograd (now Leningrad) in 1917, and during its nine-day life carried the first reports of the start of the Russian Revolution. Bidding stopped at £lBOO.