the book collector
tentially, some duplication. When it is mentioned in earlier records, Lewis’s piece is described variously as ‘remarks’ (copies 1, 2, and 3); ‘observations’ (copies 4, 14, 15, and 21); ‘statement’ (copies 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9), and ‘advertisement’ (copies 11 and 13). Ten copies of the statement were bound either with the Tour or in separate volumes with related material, intended to complement the Tour (copies 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 13, 16, and 21). Four were included with Lewis’s Groups (copies 7, 8, 12, and 18). Five are unbound (4, 10, 17, 19, and 20); two, bound separately (copies 14 and 15); and one, now disbound (copy 21). Of those recorded, eleven have been located: six of the first (copies 2, 9, and 19, Wormsley Library; 3, Austrian National Library; 10, John Carter Brown Library; and 21, Landon/Korey) and five of the second (copies 12, Cummins; 16, Houghton Library, Harvard; 17, Barlow; 18, Priddy; and 20, Landon/Korey). It is unclear when the claim that Lewis’s statement had been suppressed first appeared in print. The roughly contemporary descriptions in the 1827 sale of Drury’s library (copy 1) as well as the 1833 sales of Hanrott’s (copy 2) and Haslewood’s (copy 3) made no mention of it. Thorpe’s note in his 1837 catalogue (copy 4) stated it was ‘privately printed’, as did the notes in the 1848 Eyton sale (cop- ies 5, 6, and 7) and the 1867 George Smith sale (copy 9). The earliest reference I have found is in Joseph Sabin’s 1875 description of the set in Menzies collection (copy 11), which included a comment on its scarcity. The notes for those in the 1909 sale of William Wheeler Smith’s collection (copies 14 and 15) also link suppression and rarity. Jackson reiterated this, stating of the ‘Advertisement’ that Lewis ‘was persuaded, or decided on his own, to suppress. It is now very uncommon’. 22 Whether these comments have any connection to the note on the copy at the John Carter Brown Library (copy 10) is not known. The ‘mutual friends’ may have intervened with Lewis as he was library and auction catalogues in the Landon/Korey collection, as well as the microfilm of Sotheby catalogues for selected sales. Mr. Barlow kindly provided the information from the Haslewood and G.H. Freeling catalogues in his collection. The descriptions often do not provide su Y cient detail to determine the contents of a lot and can vary from one sale to the next: e.g., G.H. Freeling’s set is more fully described in the 1848 Eyton sale (see copy 5). 22 . Jackson, p. 41.
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