"Literary Property Changing Hands"
In our June issue, Ian McKay wrote a short piece on the Peyraud Collection, auctioned by Bloomsbury earlier this year. This fascinating collection-including Samuel Johnson, Jane Austen, and Fanny Burney, etc.-was formed by the late librarian Paula Peyraud. (Pictured here is the three-volume first edition of Burney's Evelina in contemporary calf with gilt tooling.)
Interested readers can now take note of a more extensive report on the Peyraud collection, written by Maureen E. Mulvihill, a scholar and writer with the Princeton Research Forum. In her essay, "Literary Property Changing Hands: The Peyraud Collection," Dr. Mulvihill takes an in-depth, post-auction view at the lots and their bidders. She also enlightens readers about Peyraud, book-collecting's "dark lady." A selection of fine images from the original sale catalogue accompanies the text.
Dr. Mulvihill's report was recently published in the journal Eighteenth-Century Studies, Autumn 2009, vol. 23, no. 1 (2009). You can download a PDF version here:
