Collecting First Editions Of Books Is ‘A Kind Of Madness”

Samuel Pepys once “bought a copy of the second edition of the scientist Robert Boyle’s Origin of Formes, and charitably sent his old copy of the first edition to his brother, as if it were a pair of left-off shoes. To us, ‘first edition’ sounds like ‘diamond ring’, something inherently valuable. That is why Sotheby’s is getting excited at the prospect of auctioning 3,000 books from a secret collector in the autumn.”