TEN TONS OF BOOKS

Taranaki Daily News, 5 September 1935, Page 12

TEN TONS OF BOOKS

ROYAL LIBRARIES BOUGHT. SUPERB TREASURE ACQUIRED. The libraries formed by Henry V of France and by the Empress Elizabeth of Austria have been acquired by Messrs. Maggs Brothers, London, says the Daily Telegraph. Messrs. Maggs, who have conducted many book and manuscript negotiations in the past, including the purchase of the Codex Sinaiticus, state that these two transactions far exceed in financial importance any which they have previously effected. They hope to hold an exhibition of the chief treasures shortly. Henry V of France, who reigned for ten days in 1830 and died as the Comte de Chambord in 1883, was Henry Duke of Bordeaux, a grandson of Charles X of France. His magnificent library, consisting of ten tons of books, in eighty-seven huge cases, was eventually left to the son of Don Carlos, Don Jaime Duke of Madrid. After negotiations lasting over, a year it has been bought from his heirs and removed to London from the Castle of Frohsdorf, near Vienna. The superb Louis Seize bindings, m which a great number of the books are covered, are in pristine freshness and beauty. Yet to many the chief feature of the library will be the extraordinary collection of French pamphlets, written between 1820 and 1875, for and against the monarchy in France. Importance is also laid upon a series of at least 100 presentation romantic bindings inscribed “The Second Henri Quatre,” out of compliment to the Comte de Chambord, who was likened to the first King of the House of Bourbon. The library left by the Empress Elizabeth of Austria consists of a huge number of works in lavish bindings. Liszt’s Coronation Mass, 1856, is in a special ornate binding of salmon pink, with the arms of the Empress.