Bloomberg is reporting that Annette Campbell-White, who runs a venture capital firm that specializes in early stage medical technologies, will be selling her book collection through Sotheby’s in London.
Highlights of the collection include:
First Editions of:
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
T. S. Elliot’s The Wasteland and
James Joyce’s Ulysses.
An inscribed copy of Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time
and the typescript of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall
I am uncertain why the California based collector is sending her books to auction in London. She did offer the collection to a New Zealand University (Campbell-White was born there) “but they didn’t seem to understand the value.” I am not sure if that means that they didn’t have the funds or they thought it was overpriced.
Her advice for collectors:
“If you wanted to make a return on your money, I wouldn’t do it speculating on books…For years, none of them appreciated.”
She countinues:
“Newer collectors seem to go for the high spots” which leads to values that are out of whack with the rest of the market.
Which is why when I am asked by budding collectors what books or subject matter they should collect the answer is always the same. You collect what you like. No matter where you fall on the collector scale you limit or eliminate your risk by collecting what you have a genuine interest in.
In Nicholas A. Basbanes modern classic on book collecting A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomania and the Eternal Passion for Books he touches on the 1990 exhibition at the Grolier Club “Fifteen Woman Book Collectors.”
To get the fifteen collectors the exhibit had to span five centuries!
The opening address of the exhibition was giving by Mary Hyde Eccles one of the greatest of woman book collectors who, along long with her husband, built one of the largest collections of material related to Samuel Johnson and his circle. Eccles was also among the first women to become a member of the Groiler Club and she was the first woman elected to membership in the Roxburghe Club.
She called woman bibliophiles members of a new species and went on to say:
“The fascinating question raised by all this is why, in five centuries, in six countries, do there seem to have been so few women book collectors? The answer is obvious: a serious collector on any scale must have three advantages: considerable resources, education, and freedom. Until recently, only a handful have had all three, but times are changing”
The sale of the library of Annette Campbell-White will take place in June with the value of the collection currently pegged at $3.8 million.
UPDATE
I have been requested by Annette Campbell-White to offer a correction regarding my speculation as to the possible reasons why her collection did not go to the New Zealand University. She says:
“The fact is that I offered over time to donate it to three different universities. My only conditions for the donation were that they maintained the collection in good
condition and that the books would not merely disappear into the stacks.
Since I could not obtain guarantees that these fairly minor conditions
would be met, I decided against donating.”
In the Bloomberg article the term “offered” is used when talking about the New Zealand University, in the antiquarian trade that term almost always means ‘offered for sale’ as opposed to offered for donation. I have been selling to and working with the special collection departments of universities for many years. The most common reason for them not being able to land the big collection is a monetary one hence my “speculation”. I look forward to seeing an accounting of the entire library so I can better understand why there is even an issue of the books disappearing into the stacks. Clearly the particular items mentioned in the article will never leave the realm of special collections.