| Gutenberg Bible |
| Books -- Provenance. |
| Book collectors -- Biography. |
| Doheny, Estelle, 1875-1958 |
| Doheny, Carrie Estelle Betzold, 1875-1958 |
| Doheny, Edward Laurence, Mrs., 1875-1958 |
| Book owners |
| Books -- Collectors and collecting |
Available:
Library | Shelf Number | Shelf Location | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Dartmouth - Southworth | 093 DAV 2019 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Elizabeth Taber Library | 093 DAV | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Fairhaven-Millicent | 093 DAV 2019 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library | 093 DAVIS | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Lakeville Public Library | 093 DAV | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Mattapoisett Free Public Library | 093 DAV 2019 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Middleborough Public Library | 093 DAV | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... New Bedford Free Public Library | 093 DAV 2019 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... New Bedford Wilks Branch | 093 DAV 2019 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Norfolk Public Library | 093 DAVI | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Plympton Public Library | 093 DAV | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Rehoboth - Blanding Free PL | 093 DAV | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Richards Memorial Library | 093 D290 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Wareham Free Library | 093 DAV 2019 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Westport Free Public Library | 093 DAV 2019 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"A lively tale of historical innovation, the thrill of the bibliophile's hunt, greed and betrayal." - The New York Times Book Review
"An addictive and engaging look at the 'competitive, catty and slightly angst-ridden' heart of the world of book collecting." - The Houston Chronicle
The never-before-told story of one extremely rare copy of the Gutenberg Bible, and its impact on the lives of the fanatical few who were lucky enough to own it.
For rare-book collectors, an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible--of which there are fewer than 50 in existence--represents the ultimate prize. Here, Margaret Leslie Davis recounts five centuries in the life of one copy, from its creation by Johannes Gutenberg, through the hands of monks, an earl, the Worcestershire sauce king, and a nuclear physicist to its ultimate resting place, in a steel vault in Tokyo. Estelle Doheny, the first woman collector to add the book to her library and its last private owner, tipped the Bible onto a trajectory that forever changed our understanding of the first mechanically printed book.
The Lost Gutenberg draws readers into this incredible saga, immersing them in the lust for beauty, prestige, and knowledge that this rarest of books sparked in its owners. Exploring books as objects of obsession across centuries, this is a must-read for history buffs, book collectors, seekers of hidden treasures, and anyone who has ever craved a remarkable book--and its untold stories.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Davis (Mona Lisa in Camelot) follows a single copy of the Gutenberg Bible through a series of different book collectors and institutions in this enjoyable but unsatisfying history. After a brief account of the Bible's creation sometime around 1456 by Johann Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, Davis skips ahead to 1836, when the 3rd Earl of Gosford, a shy and scholarly Irish aristocrat, acquired Gutenberg Bible Number 45. Later owners included a "lord, a sauce tycoon, a papal countess, and a nuclear physicist." Davis places the primary focus on Estelle Doheny, oil tycoon Edward Doheny's widow. One of the only female American book collectors of the early 20th century, Estelle secured the book in 1950 after a four-decade-long search. In addition to character sketches, Davis also traces changes in the study of books, from in-person inspection via magnifying glasses, to chemical analysis using a cyclotron's proton beam, then software comparisons of digitized editions. Despite these intriguing facts and characters, Davis's overall thesis-that "each owner and his or her circle left a mark" on the book-doesn't leave the reader with any meaningful insights by the end of her book. Agent: Betsy Amster, Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
The surprising journey of a special book.Davis (Mona Lisa in Camelot: How Jacqueline Kennedy and Da Vinci's Masterpiece Charmed and Captivated a Nation, 2008, etc.) follows the remarkable tale of "Number 45," one of the finest copies of the Gutenberg Bible in existence. The author focuses the narrative on the life of book collector Estelle Doheny, whose oil-tycoon husband was at the center of the infamous Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s. In 1950, she purchased the Gutenberg as the crowning achievement of her life as a collector and as a devout Catholic. Doheny's various attempts to purchase a Gutenberg, and the dealers, scholars, and members of her household who took part in the quest, make for engrossing reading. However, the story of Number 45 is far deeper and richer, beginning with the unsurpassed skill and ingenuity of Gutenberg himself. This particular copy went on to be owned by three intriguing modern owners before Doheny. Through the stories of these three wealthy men, the author explores the significance of rare book collecting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The collectors themselves all have interesting backgrounds, as welle.g., Charles William Dyson Perrins, heir to the Lea Perrins worcestershire sauce fortune as well as a once-famed porcelain dynasty. After Doheny's death, Number 45 was used in scientific experiments to determine the components of Gutenberg's inks. She had left the Bibleand the entirety of her rare-book and art collectionin the care of a Catholic seminary, but church authorities decided to sell everything in the late 1980s, and Number 45 changed hands yet again, landing at a Japanese firm for a record $5.4 million. Davis does a fine job telling a fascinating story that touches on the origin of books, the passion of collectors, the unseen world of rare-book dealers, and the lives of the super-rich, past and present.A great read for any book lover. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Quite certainly the most renowned of all early printed books, a Gutenberg Bible (or even a part of it) crowns any rare-book collection. Davis has traced the remarkable history of one incomplete exemplar, Hubay Number 45, shaken loose in the Napoleonic Wars' upheavals. This particular volume came to rest for a spell in Northern Ireland in a British bibliophile's library. Bouncing around Britain, it eventually ended up in the hands of an American widow. Book collecting might seem a preoccupation of a limited cadre of obsessive, pedantic academic wannabes, but Davis makes bibliographic history utterly page-turning and absorbing, with intrigues, devastating tragedies, vast fortunes, embezzlement, a seductively voiced telephone operator, the Teapot Dome scandal, murder-suicide, earthquake, and even Worcestershire sauce. Davis' brilliantly told story features outsize characters but focuses primarily on Estelle Doheny, the Los Angeles purchaser of Number 45, who, in one further irony, held in her hands this long-sought volume only after she had turned nearly blind.--Mark Knoblauch Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
WHETHER WE'RE BROWSING in an antique store or perusing an auction catalog or walking through a museum, our imagination takes leaps. We are fascinated by the history of objects. We can't help wondering where these timeworn treasures have been, what human dramas they have witnessed and what stories they could tell. Margaret Leslie Davis, the author of "The Lost Gutenberg: The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey," has tracked down the history of a Gutenberg Bible, composing a lively tale of historical innovation, the thrill of the bibliophile's hunt, greed and betrayal. For the book's owners, possessing this rare volume often satisfied a profound emotional longing. "We change the book and it changes us," Davis writes. She first encountered the Bible while researching her 1998 biography, "Dark Side of Fortune: Triumph and Scandal in the Life of Oil Tycoon Edward L. Doheny." (He was the California magnate deeply implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal, which shook the Harding administration.) After Doheny's death in 1935, his widow, Carrie Estelle Doheny, sought to redeem her husband's name by building a magnificent library at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, Calif., stocking it with her collection of rare spiritual tomes. "The Lost Gutenberg" revolves around Doheny's pursuit of her trophy and what became of it after her death. The author does a loving job of conveying Johann Gutenberg's spectacular innovation in movable type and the experiments in his workshop in Mainz, Germany. This particular Gutenberg Bible, printed before Aug. 15, 1446, is listed as No. 45, one of fewer than 50 copies that survive. Even fragments of Gutenbergs are highly prized, but this volume has its original calfskin cover and the pages are intact. Its first owner, Davis notes, "had not scrimped on ornamentation. The volume is filled with elaborate, richly colored illuminations" - twisting tendrils and flowers and birds. Perhaps because of the absence of records, the author omits the first 390 years of the Bible's existence and picks up the story in 1836, when it begins to make its way around Britain, moving from one Downton Abbey-style castle to another. Possessing such an important religious object might have held out the promise of grace, but time after time the Victorian-era owners of this Gutenberg suffered one misfortune after another - financial reversals, crime and untimely deaths. The secretive Archibald Acheson, the third Earl of Gosford, found refuge in the family library while his father persisted in a 40-year attempt to build the largest Norman Revival castle in Northern Ireland. The construction of the unfinished 242-room edifice left the family with crippling debt. After Acheson's death in 1864, his son liquidated the Bible along with the entire collection. It was acquired by Lord William TyssenAmherst of Norfolk, a world traveler who built a notable library of rare books charting the invention of the printed word. His comfortable life was upended when his solicitor embezzled his fortune. In 1908, Amherst's creditors forced him to auction off his Gutenberg, and he died a broken man six weeks later. Charles William Dyson Perrins, the lucky buyer, ran two successful businesses: Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce and Royal Worcester Porcelain. But his valiant efforts to keep his factories going during World War II left him in financial straits. In need of money to rebuild, he sacrificed his books, selling his Gutenberg in 1947 to a dealer. Estelle Doheny was an unlikely collector. She had been a 25-year-old telephone operator when her voice enchanted Doheny. The oil man, more than twice her age, sought her out and they married in 1900. During her husband's decade-long legal ordeal (he was acquitted of bribery, but his reputation was tarnished), she comforted herself by acquiring spiritual texts. The Gutenberg Bible, purchased in 1950, was the jewel of her collection, which she left to St. John's Seminary upon her death in 1958. In her bequest, she insisted that nothing be sold for 25 years, in the belief that future librarians should have flexibility but would keep the collection intact. It was a tragic mistake. The Los Angeles Archdiocese, unable to resist monetizing the valuable assets, put the entire Doheny book collection on sale in 1987. The Maruzen Co. Ltd. of Tokyo snapped up the Gutenberg for $5.4 million. It is now the property of Keio University, where it has been digitized and locked away from public view. MERYL gordon, the director of magazine writing at N.Y.U.'s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, is the author of "Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend."
Library Journal Review
For serious book collectors, ownership of a Gutenberg Bible is a dream goal. This fascinating account from Davis (Rivers in the Desert) traces the history of one particular copy (no. 45) from its printing in Mainz, Germany, in the 1450s to its current home in a vault in Keio University, Japan. He deftly describes the lives and motives of the five identified modern owners, paying particular attention to Estelle Doheny, who had made it her life's goal to obtain a copy and, as a devout Catholic, appreciated it for its religious significance. She bequeathed her collection to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which allowed no. 45 to be studied scientifically, giving the world a glimpse into its production. The Archdiocese later sold the collection to raise money for the education of future priests. VERDICT Davis offers a gripping, well-researched account of the importance of books as cultural artifacts and of one particular work that transformed the world, as well as the lives of those who owned a copy, that will appeal especially to bibliophiles.-Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, NJ © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Part I The Imperial Century | p. 1 |
| Chapter 1 Million-Dollar Bookshelf | p. 3 |
| Chapter 2 Treasure Neglected | p. 21 |
| Chapter 3 The Bibliophile | p. 37 |
| Chapter 4 The Patriot | p. 61 |
| Part II The American Century | p. 89 |
| Chapter 5 The Mighty Woman Book Hunter | p. 91 |
| Chapter 6 The Lost Gutenberg | p. 123 |
| Chapter 7 The Countess and Her Gutenberg | p. 147 |
| Chapter 8 The Nuclear Bibliophiles | p. 167 |
| Part III The Asian Century | p. 193 |
| Chapter 9 The Unexpected Betrayal | p. 195 |
| Chapter 10 The Virtual Gutenberg | p. 221 |
| Epilogue: Final Bows | p. 243 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 247 |
| Notes | p. 251 |
| Bibliography | p. 275 |
| Index | p. 283 |