Medieval book of hours from William O’Brien’s library. The library has hardly been touched or catalogued since it was left to the care of the Jesuit community college at Milltown in Dublin, following the judge’s death a century ago. An Irish judge, O’Brien’s previous claim to fame was presiding over the infamous Phoenix Park murder trial in 1882. The book, estimated to fetch up to £40,000, was printed by Albrecht Dürer’s godfather Anton Koberger and is filled with thousands of woodcuts of kings, queens, martyrs and monsters, as well as early representations of towns – although Peter Selley, Sotheby’s book specialist, said many of them sprang from the illustrators’ imaginations rather than reality.īibliophile William O’Brien amassed the books in the 1880s and 1890s. The Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, which is described by the auctioneer as the most elaborately illustrated books printed in Europe in the 15th century. Other books expected to be in demand among collectors are a rare first edition of Francis Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning, one of the key texts in the development of modern scientific thought. It is believed to have served as inspiration for Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels – a first edition of which is also included in the sale. The playwright is believed to have used the same edition as the source for his play Troilus and Cressida.Īnother famous inspiration in the sale is Jonathan Swift’s copy of the Welsh pirate Lionel Wafer’s account of his travels to the western coast of South America and the West Indies, published in 1699. To complement the Shakespeare, there is a 1587 edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles, which is widely believed to have provided inspiration for Shakespeare’s history plays, and a 1561 edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. 1726 first edition of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
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