Lyon & Turnbull are delighted to present The Library of a Scottish Gentleman, providing an engrossing cross-section of book-collecting tastes at the turn of the 20th century, and now offered for sale for the first time after 100 years in the collector’s family.
Containing over 100 books dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries, the library is studded with an array of foundational documents in the history of Scotland, including the first edition of the King James Bible to be printed in Scotland, the first book printed in Glasgow, the first description of salmon-fishing, and the first published works by two of Scotland’s national bards, Sir Walter Scott and his mythical counterpart, Ossian.
Some of the books changed the course of Scottish history. Laud’s Liturgy, the prayer-book which Charles I attempted to impose on Scottish congregations in 1637, had the unintended consequence of igniting the covenanting movement and bringing Scotland into open rebellion against England. Samuel Johnson later identified The Muses Welcome to the High and Mighty Prince James, a rare compendium of verse compiled for James VI and I in 1617, as demonstrating the ‘abundance of learning in Scotland’ which he believed to have been lost in the ensuing century of civil war and social upheaval, though works such as the first Foulis edition of Homer, a superb artefact of Scottish Enlightenment classicism and master presswork, might suggest that such pessimism was misplaced.
The library contains no fewer than five works printed on vellum, fine bindings by craftsmen including Francis Bedford, Riviere & Son, and T. J. Cobden-Sanderson of the Doves Bindery, and choice copies on large-paper of works by J. M. W. Turner, Cervantes and the original bibliomaniac Thomas Frognall Dibdin, together with fine library sets, colour-plate books, and a sprinkling of rare works by English playwrights and poets from Beaumont and Fletcher to Percy Bysshe Shelley.
