[Rarebooks] fa: "L'AFFAIRE LIBRI" - 3 works re. BOOK THIEF & FORGER GUGLIELMO LIBRI - 1849

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, May 19. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/c3h952f

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


Three pamphlets related to l'affaire Libri, "one of the most egregious episodes of book plunder in recent times" (Nicholas Basbanes, A Gentle Madness).

Paul Lecroix: Lettres a M. Hatton, Juge d'Instruction, au sujet de l'incroyable accusation intentee contre M. Libri, contenant de curieux details sur toute cette affaire. Paris: Paulin, 1849. [BOUND WITH:] Achille Jubinal: Lettre a Paul Lacroix (Bibliophile Jacob). Contenant: une curieux episode de l'histoire des Bibliotheques publiques, avec quelques faits nouveaux relatifs a M. Libri et a l'odieuse persecution dont il est l'objet. Paris: Paulin, 1849. [BOUND WITH:] A.-C. Cretaine: Lettre a M. Naudet… en reponse a quelques passages de sa lettre a M. Libri. Paris: Durand, 1849. Three works in one volume; 8vo, bound in recent marbled french wraps; 64 pp. + 14 pp. + 8 pp.

One of the most notorious bibliokleptomaniacs in modern history, Count Guglielmo Libri Carucci (1803-1869) was an Italian-born polymath who emigrated to France as a young man and became a widely respected lecturer, editor of scholarly journals and expert on antiquarian books and manuscripts. Appointed to a commission charged with cataloguing the antiquarian treasures in France's provincial libraries, he used his post to steal thousands of precious books and manuscripts, many of which he enhanced with forged ownership inscriptions (including one supposedly by Dante), specious royal bindings and fabricated provenances. He then sold his loot at auction in France and England. When French officials became suspicious, Libri fled to England in 1848. Two years later a French court tried him in absentia, found him guilty, and sentenced him to ten years hard labor, a fate he avoided by remaining outside of France for the rest of his life. The infamous career of the ironically-named Libri is currently the subject of an exhibition at the Grolier Club in New York City.

As seen in at least the first two of these pamphlets, Libri's renown was so great that many scholars and bibliopolists continued to defend him long after seemingly incontrovertible evidence of his guilt had come to light. Pamphlets' contents intermittently browned, a few corners lightly bumped and creased, otherwise clean and sound, bound in striking French wraps.