a dibdin rarity
9. another large-paper subscription copy of the Tour has an unidentified bookplate of the 1830s prior to coming into the collection of George Smith of Russell Square. At his Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge sale of 10 July 1867, it was lot 1944: four volumes, morocco super extra, gilt edges, by Charles Lewis, containing ‘G. Lewis’s privately printed statement respecting the prices agreed to be paid by Dr. Dibdin for the drawings, &c.’ It sold to Boone for £ 100 and passed into the collection of Henry Hucks Gibbs, first Lord Aldenham (1819–1907). The set appeared, with no mention of the Lewis piece, as lot 572 in the 3–5 May 1937 Aldenham sale by Sotheby & Co. and sold to Joseph for £ 5 15s. It later was owned by Renato Rabaiotti and now is in the Wormsley Library. It is recorded in Windle & Pippin as the ‘Advertisement’ but it is the first version, beginning with ‘The following observations’. 1 0. a copy of ‘The following observations’ in the John Carter Brown Library is a folded sheet, unbound. It has a note in a contemporary but unidentified hand at the head of first page, ‘Carefully suppressed at the desire if [of] mutual friends’. There is no information as to when it came into the collections, nor its provenance. 32 It is not recorded in Windle & Pippin. 1 1. one of the earliest references to Lewis’s remarks as ‘Advertisement’ is in the 1875 catalogue of the library of William Menzies (1810–1896), a pioneer in the collecting of Americana who also had a considerable collection of bibliography. The cata- logue was compiled by Joseph Sabin (1821–1881) and used as the basis for the sale he conducted for Leavitt on 13 November 1876. The Dibdin collection was listed in twenty-nine lots, many of the volumes being on large paper. Item 580 is an extra-illustrated copy of the Tour , three volumes in four, with Lewis’s etchings and the text to that work, including, in Sabin’s words, ‘the very 32 . There is a copy of the Tour , bound in red morocco, gilt, three volumes in six, from the library of John Russell Bartlett (1805–1886), John Carter Brown’s personal librar- ian. Also in the collection is a large-paper copy of the Tour , three volumes in brown morocco, but with no provenance noted.
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