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.