Beschreibung:

MOSS, William Edward, Lt.-Col. (1874-1953) -- Catalogue of the Very Well-Known and Valuable Library, the Property of Lt.-Col. W.E. Moss, of the Manor House, Sonning-on-Thames, Berks, who is changing his residence . London: Sotheby's, 2 March 1937. -- Catalogue of Valuable Printed Books, Autograph Letters...comprising the Property of Lt.-Col. W.E. Moss...and other Properties . London: Sotheby's, 31 July 1950. Printed list of prices and buyers' names inserted. Two volumes, 4 o (246 x 186 mm). Plates. Original wrappers. Col. Moss was one of the outstanding English book collectors of his period. He sold his collection in 1937, as his doctors had warned him that he had only a year to live. He never made another collection (the 1950 sale contained remnants), though he presented valuable volumes to the Bodleian Library. The 1937 sale included a most important collection of William Blake illuminated manuscripts, bindings for Grolier, Thomas Wotton, Matthew Parker, Count Mansfeld, and others, many reproduced. Moss claimed that most of Wotton's books were bound in England (mainly in Canterbury) but G.D. Hobson reassigned them to Parisian ateliers, except for three. Moss, in 1942, printed an illustrated catalogue of Wotton's bindings on his private press, the Manor House Press, but never completed it, and no more than six copies of it are known. See Schmidt-Künsemüller 1357; Strickland Gibson on Moss in the Bodleian Library Record , 1950. (2)