THE COLVIN LIBRARY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20315, 25 January 1928, Page 4

THE COLVIN LIBRARY.

“ EDINBURGH STEVENSON ” £lO6. In totalling £1215 at Sotheby’s the selected portion of the late Sir Sidney Colvin’s library brought an amount akin to the modest sums realised by the books of such men of letters as George Augustus Sala, Henley, and Walkley, to mention a few names (says the London Daily Telegraph). There was this difference: The Colvin books had been depleted of many Stevenson associations, and, further, when the late keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum gave up his official residence on retirement, he disposed of a goodly portion of his library to the late Alfred Quaritch. The section of presentation books, inscribed by Joseph Conrad, included such first editions as “ Notes on Life and Let ters,” 1921, £76; “The Rescue,” 1920, £43 ; and “ The Shadow Line,” 1917, £4O. The first edition of Barrie’s “ Margaret Ogilvy,” 1896, made £26 (Spencer)—this was inscribed—as well as Browning’s “ Agamemnon of Aeschylus,” 1877, £2l (Maggs). Coleridge’s “ Kubla Khan,” in the original wrappers, 1816, brought £37 (Pickering), and 23 of E. V. Lucas’s entertaining works, each a presentation copy, accounted for £l9 15s. When Colvin was a boy of seven, living at Camberwell, Mrs Riiskin presented to him a copy of her husband’s “ King of the Golden River,” 1851, which fetched only £3 10s. As for the varied Stevensonia, the Edinburgh edition of 28 volumes, 1894-8. in Sutcliffe and Sangorski bindings, realised the highest price of the day, £lO6 (Maggs), who also gave £3l. for one of 45 copies printed from the Widener manuscript, Stevenson’s “ Memoirs of Himself,” issued at Philadelphia in 1912. The chief item in a sale at Christie’s was an original etching by Whistler of '* The Doorway,” 250gns (Colnaghi).