misslj_author (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
misslj_author) wrote2012-08-08 06:37 pm
misslj_author) wrote2012-08-08 06:37 pm
My $100US Book Buy.
There was an interesting discussion going on on the DSP Twitter (@dreamspinners) this morning, about what's the most amount you've spent on books. Now, I've spent a lot of money on books over the years, and bought loads of books, but there's one book in my collection that is the most expensive book I've ever bought.
This book is The Maciejowski Bible, and it's an out of print rare book. It's a book of illuminated manuscripts and is like the Holy Grail for medieval reenactors. When I bought my copy, it was 1998, and money wasn't as tight as it is these days, which is why I didn't really have much issue with forking out $100US for a book.
Yup. $100 US. For one book. Not including postage. At the time, our dollar was pretty crap, too, so it was around $180AU including postage by the time I was done.
Scenes from the Life of King David.
There were only three copies in the country at the time, too, and they were owned by medieval living history reenactors (we used metal weapons with blunted edges in our combat, so the real deal. Except for being blunt.) and they weren't likely to let us down here in SA borrow their book. I don't blame them, either. The SA Reference Library didn't have a copy of it, so I decided, what the hell, I'm a living history person, I'll buy myself a copy of the book.
So I did. And I don't regret it.
I remember when it arrived, I was on the way to visit![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vayshti for dinner, so I carried the book in its box (and it's not a small book - it's about 1 foot x 1.5 foot and 2.5 inches thick) to her house and we spent a good few hours pouring over it and going "Oooh" and "Aaaah" over it.
My copy isn't a first edition. It isn't in mint condition, the dust jacket is pretty torn and the spine of that reads Old Testament Miniatures. It's still a bloody awesome book, and one of a handful owned by Australians. When I die, I've decided I'll bequeath it to the SA Reference Library, so that it's there for future generations interested in history and/or reenacting to access.
Jacob's Vision of a Ladder to Heaven.
A bit about the book:
This book has long been thought to have been created under the direction of Louis IX of France in the mid-1240s, but Allison Stones, after indications of others such as François Avril, has long argued that it was most likely illuminated in the northern counties of France, ca. 1250 (cf most recently Allison Stones, "Questions of style and provenance in the Morgan Bible", in Between the Word and the Picture, Princeton, 2005). Originally it probably contained only paintings, organized in a consistent visual rhythm from page to page. Within 100 years, the book acquired marginal inscriptions in Latin describing the scenes illustrated. Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski, Bishop of Kraków, had the book given as a gift to Abbas I (Shah of Persia) in 1608. Abbas ordered inscriptions in Persian to be added, mostly translating the Latin ones already there. Later, perhaps in the eighteenth century, inscriptions were added in Judeo-Persian. Thus the book consists of beautiful paintings of events from Hebrew scripture, set in the scenery and customs of thirteenth-century France, depicted from a Christian perspective, and surrounded by text in three scripts and five languages (Latin, Persian, Arabic, Judeo-Persian, and Hebrew). - Galbithink.
It has several names - The Morgan Bible, The Morgan Bible of Louis IX, The Book of Kings,The Crusader Bible, and The Maciejowski Bible. It is a medieval picture Bible of 43 folios and is *gorgeous*.
So that is how I came to spend so much money on one book.
Battle Scenes of Lot's Rescue.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons.
This book is The Maciejowski Bible, and it's an out of print rare book. It's a book of illuminated manuscripts and is like the Holy Grail for medieval reenactors. When I bought my copy, it was 1998, and money wasn't as tight as it is these days, which is why I didn't really have much issue with forking out $100US for a book.
Yup. $100 US. For one book. Not including postage. At the time, our dollar was pretty crap, too, so it was around $180AU including postage by the time I was done.
Scenes from the Life of King David.
There were only three copies in the country at the time, too, and they were owned by medieval living history reenactors (we used metal weapons with blunted edges in our combat, so the real deal. Except for being blunt.) and they weren't likely to let us down here in SA borrow their book. I don't blame them, either. The SA Reference Library didn't have a copy of it, so I decided, what the hell, I'm a living history person, I'll buy myself a copy of the book.
So I did. And I don't regret it.
I remember when it arrived, I was on the way to visit
vayshti for dinner, so I carried the book in its box (and it's not a small book - it's about 1 foot x 1.5 foot and 2.5 inches thick) to her house and we spent a good few hours pouring over it and going "Oooh" and "Aaaah" over it. My copy isn't a first edition. It isn't in mint condition, the dust jacket is pretty torn and the spine of that reads Old Testament Miniatures. It's still a bloody awesome book, and one of a handful owned by Australians. When I die, I've decided I'll bequeath it to the SA Reference Library, so that it's there for future generations interested in history and/or reenacting to access.
Jacob's Vision of a Ladder to Heaven.
A bit about the book:
This book has long been thought to have been created under the direction of Louis IX of France in the mid-1240s, but Allison Stones, after indications of others such as François Avril, has long argued that it was most likely illuminated in the northern counties of France, ca. 1250 (cf most recently Allison Stones, "Questions of style and provenance in the Morgan Bible", in Between the Word and the Picture, Princeton, 2005). Originally it probably contained only paintings, organized in a consistent visual rhythm from page to page. Within 100 years, the book acquired marginal inscriptions in Latin describing the scenes illustrated. Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski, Bishop of Kraków, had the book given as a gift to Abbas I (Shah of Persia) in 1608. Abbas ordered inscriptions in Persian to be added, mostly translating the Latin ones already there. Later, perhaps in the eighteenth century, inscriptions were added in Judeo-Persian. Thus the book consists of beautiful paintings of events from Hebrew scripture, set in the scenery and customs of thirteenth-century France, depicted from a Christian perspective, and surrounded by text in three scripts and five languages (Latin, Persian, Arabic, Judeo-Persian, and Hebrew). - Galbithink.
It has several names - The Morgan Bible, The Morgan Bible of Louis IX, The Book of Kings,The Crusader Bible, and The Maciejowski Bible. It is a medieval picture Bible of 43 folios and is *gorgeous*.
So that is how I came to spend so much money on one book.
Battle Scenes of Lot's Rescue.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons.
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Just out of interest, I went on a quick scour of the internet to see if I could find any other copies up for sale these days. Only found two - both from Germany. One was asking US$ 4490.72, the other US$ 4439.68. I know book sellers often put silly prices up online, just hoping for a taker, but, yes - even in these days when the bottom seems to have collapsed out of the second hand book market for ordinary folk, it appears you did very, very well.
There's a fairly high chance there may be other copies out there priced more reasonably, especially when so many titles and misattributions are possible (and Morgan bible brings up a lot of books from a guy called Morgan who translated the Welsh bible), but anyone who knows their stock is not going to be letting their copies get away from them cheaply.
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Hardly first editions - If I'm reading this right, they are limited facsimile publications from 1998. Copies 66 and 971 of 980.
I'll be very interested to see if you can find more sensible prices. It might be a case of luck on the day - if they don't come up very often, they probably get snapped up very quickly.
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This ones a bit cheaper at US $385000. Lol.
Abe does have stupid prices listed. Eg, Matt bought me paper pretties from my coming birthday. It cost him £116.09 from Amazon. I've seen the same set at £ 567.00.
Actually, if you want to scare yourself, just type "Harry Potter" into Abe and list by highest price first.
... If you ever come to visit me here, I will have to take you into the British Library, and then whisk you across the water to the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. That collection of books and manuscripts is so stunningly beautiful.
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I did find some much cheaper - http://tinyurl.com/8kbf6rq
http://tinyurl.com/98bejqq
http://tinyurl.com/9fstmxa
(Using tinyurl bc the full url was like 2000 lines.)
One day I will get to the UK. I'd like to see Lindisfarne, too.
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My most expensive book was closer to three hundred (my surgery text book in med school)
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WOOOW. That's a lot of money for a text book, but I remember how they used to jack up the prices of those things at uni, too. They really liked to make a killing off students.
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and that was back in 1990. I don't want to know what it costs now (as the anatomy package now costs over 300, text books are nuts)
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