23 January 2025
Dominic Somerville-Brown
This February, we are delighted to include a selection of 70 lots from the library at Dollerie, the home of Murrays of Dollerie, in our Books & Manuscripts auction.
The Murrays of Dollerie can trace their ancestry back to the 15th-century nobleman Sir David Murray of Tullibardine and Gask, forebear of the dukes of Atholl. The library at Dollerie, containing books dating back to the 16th century, reflects the breadth and depth of knowledge a Scottish gentleman was expected to acquire.
First edition of the first non-Hebrew book printed by Menasseh ben Israel at his newly established press in Amsterdam, published only a few days after the first book of the press, a collection of Hebrew prayers, which appeared on 1st January the same year.
In the mid-16th century Anthony Murray, the younger son of Sir David’s grandson, was granted a portion of the muir of Madderty from the abbey of Inchaffray, which became the basis of his family’s estate at Dollerie in Strathearn, Perthshire. In the 1570s Anthony’s eldest son David expanded the estate with a purchase of the lands of Crieff, previously held by a kinsman who had been the barber of James V. In 1674 a later Anthony received a charter from Charles II to erect his lands into a barony.
First edition of ‘the most famous of all encyclopaedias in the English language’ (PMM). A landmark Enlightenment text, it was originally issued in 100 weekly parts between 1768 and 1771; sets in any state of completeness are rare on the market.
His son, also Anthony and known by the family as Auld Dullerie (or Dullary), was born in 1676 and followed the path of many bright and enquiring Scotsmen of the age, travelling to the Netherlands and studying at the university of Leiden. Auld Dullerie died in 1761 at the age of 85, outliving his son and namesake, who joined the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion and fell at Culloden. The family’s bipartite tradition of travel, either in pursuit of learning or martial glory, was continued by later generations, which include a student at the Scots College in Douai in the late 18th century, two veterans of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and a director of the Geological Survey of Newfoundland.
The library at Dollerie features rare accounts of travel and exploration, fine editions of classical literature, and landmarks of scientific discovery. Highlights include one of the first books printed by Menasseh ben Israel, the founder of the modern Jewish community in Britain, the true first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in Edinburgh in 1771, and the first Latin edition of Isaac Newton’s Opticks, while the runs of books acquired by Auld Dullerie while a student in the Netherlands together recall a fascinating era of intellectual exchange between Scotland and continental Europe which paved the way for the Scottish Enlightenment.
Comprising over 70 lots, the library will be sold in our Books and Manuscripts sale on 5 February 2025.
Further reading on the Murray family:
Bernard, Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, 9th edition, 1898, volume 1, p.
Cassilde Tournebize, ‘Autour des “’Forty-Five” et de Culloden : Lettres d’Anthony Murray (1715-1746) et de ses proches’, Guerres et paix : la Grande-Bretagne au XVIIIe siècle, ed. Paul-Gabriel Boucé (Paris, 1998), vol. 1, pp. 69-81.
