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48 (CURRER, Frances Mary Richardson.) STEWART, C. J. A Catalogue of the Library Collected by Miss Richardson Currer at Eshton Hall, Craven, Yorkshire. London: printed for private circulation only [by J. Moyes], 1833 Large octavo (251 × 158 mm). Contemporary red half morocco by Joseph Mackenzie, marbled paper-covered boards edged in gilt, spine lettered in gilt and compartments panelled in gilt, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, others uncut. Engraved frontispiece showing Eshton Hall and 3 engraved plates of the library and its surroundings, all drawn by F. Mackenzie from sketches by Stewart, and engraved by S. Rawle. Three Times newspaper clip- pings reporting on the 1916 Sotheby’s sale of Currer’s library neatly tipped in to front free endpaper verso, facing the armorial bookplate of San Francis- can bookseller David Bickersteth Magee (1905–1977), president of the Anti- quarian Booksellers Association of America and the Roxburghe Club of San Francisco, and member of the Grolier Club; binder’s stamp to first blank ver- so noting Mackenzie to be “bookbinder to the King”. Extremities and joints professionally repaired, engraved plate guards foxed, cloth book marker laid in at p. 217, else a very good copy. First complete edition, one of 100 copies, of the privately printed catalogue of the great collection of England’s first acknowledged female bibliophile, Frances Mary Richardson Currer . Having inherited two sizeable estates, including her great-grandfather Richard Richardson’s extensive natural history library, Currer (1785–1861) spent her life adding to and improving her collection. Contemporaries estimated that it numbered some 15,000–20,000 volumes, shelved across both the library and drawing room of her family home, Eshton Hall. Noted in particular for its fine condi- tion, the collection included early printed rarities and manuscript groupings such as the Richardson correspondence and the Hop- kinson papers. She was held in great esteem by her contemporar- ies—Thomas Frognall Dibdin judged that her library placed her “at the head of all female collectors in Europe” ( Reminiscences of a Literary Life , 1836)—and later book historians such as Seymour De Ricci wrote of her as “England’s earliest female bibliophile” ( English
Collectors of Books and Manuscripts , 1930). Despite all this, however, Dibdin did not invite Currer to join the Roxburgh Club, the bibli- ophilic society he founded (the first woman to join would be the American collector Mary Hyde Eccles in 1985). In 1820, at Currer’s request, the London bookseller Robert Triphook prepared a first catalogue of the library, of which 50 cop- ies were printed. But with the collection still growing, Triphook’s catalogue quickly became outdated and so in 1833 the present cat- alogue was prepared by another London bookseller, Charles James Stewart, using a modified system devised by librarian Thomas Hartwell Horne for the British Museum. Printed in an edition of 100 copies, Stewart’s catalogue additionally provided an excellent in- dex and four engraved plates showing the volumes in situ at Eshton Hall. The edition appears to have been bound by John Mackenzie (1788– c .1850), who held the office of Bookbinder to George IV and William IV and is noted for his use of richly gilt hard-grain morocco leather, most prominently on the natural history and colour-plate books of distinguished noble collections such as the Broxbourne and Grenville libraries (see the BL Database of Bookbindings). Though Currer had hoped that her library would remain intact at Eshton Hall, her half-brother sold the majority at Sotheby’s in 1862. A second sale took place at Sotheby’s in 1916, and the three news- paper clippings tipped in to this copy of the catalogue record some of the headline-worthy lots, such as the purchase of the Richardson correspondence by Quaritch and the purchase of the Hopkinson papers and the Coverdale Bible by George D. Smith of New York, a buyer who was at the time representing Henry E. Huntington. £3,000 [130676] 49 (DACIER, Anne Lefèvre, tr.) HOMER. L’Iliade, traduite en françois, avec des remarques par Madame Dacier. Paris: Rigaud, 1711
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